ABSTRACT
Floods are a common environmental hazard, due to the widespread distribution of river floodplains and low-lying coasts that have proved attractive for human settlement. Over 3,000 flood disasters were recorded in the EM-DAT database between 1990 and 2010. They were responsible for more than 200,000 deaths and adversely affected nearly 3 billion people, mostly through homelessness. For example, a total of 12 million people were displaced by floods during 2008 in India and 2010 in Pakistan. At present, 800 million people live in flood-prone areas; 70 million are exposed to flooding every year (Peduzzi et al., 2011). Floods coexist with other hazards and can be difficult to classify; they can be the consequence of storms and tsunamis but may cause landslides and disease epidemics.
