ABSTRACT
This Chapter focuses on the study of historical floods as events documented by indirect means of human observation, through a variety of different documentary sources. It discusses floods in Europe derived from documentary evidence during the past millennium. The chapter examines the beginnings of early-instrumental and systematic-instrumental hydrological observations in Europe. It describes basic sources of documentary evidence related to floods and the problems that may be encountered in the use of historical source materials. The chapter presents an overview of documentary-based flood research in the form of long-term frequency and severity series, as well as a summary of the most disastrous floods in the Mediterranean, Western, Central and Northern Europe. Newspapers and journals provide very important documentary information, as they describe the courses, causes and impacts of floods and often include detailed specification of damage. Historical hydrology provides centennial-scale records of flooding from which it is possible to reconstruct the frequency and magnitude of extreme events.
