ABSTRACT
The lives of millions of people on Earth are shaped and shattered by natural disasters – earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, tsunamis, storms, floods, droughts, landslides, heat waves, cold spells and wild fires, which bring misery to various parts of the globe. Large floods are intermittent events, typically of rare recurrence in a given location. In Europe, floods and mud flows occurred in Italy in October and November 2011, with multiple fatalities. Climate-driven changes in flood frequency exhibit a huge complexity that depends on the generating mechanisms. That is, flood magnitudes are expected to rise where floods result from increasingly heavy rainfalls, while flood magnitudes may decrease where floods are generated by a smaller spring snowmelt. There are three basic adaptation strategies for coping with floods: protect, accommodate and retreat. Accommodation implies being aware of the existing flood risk and trying to reduce the susceptibility to flood damage and the impacts of flooding, by a mix of technical and non-technical solutions.
