ABSTRACT
This chapter examines some of the ways in which law is relevant to flood management, and sets out a number of the most recent key developments in the ways that national governments have attempted to manage floods. The mapping of flood hazard is essential for the understanding of which areas are prone to flooding, and under what circumstances. The expected increase in the number of intense storms and precipitation events in certain parts of the world highlights the difficulty in quantifying the hazard from flash floods. While flooding is a hazard, flood risk can be defined as a combination of the severity of a particular event with the probability of its occurrence, as mediated by the social vulnerability of the human system affected. As with 'hazard' and 'risk', there is no single accepted definition of 'vulnerability' when it comes to flooding. The vulnerability of those living in areas that are liable to flooding varies dramatically.
