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Assessing river flood risk and adaptation in Europe—review of projections for the future

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Abstract

Flood damages have exhibited a rapid upward trend, both globally and in Europe, faster than population and economic growth. Hence, vigorous attempts of attribution of changes have been made. Flood risk and vulnerability tend to change over many areas, due to a range of climatic and nonclimatic impacts whose relative importance is site-specific. Flooding is a complex phenomenon and there are several generating mechanisms, among others intense and/or long-lasting precipitation, snowmelt, ice jam. Projected climate-driven changes in future flood frequency are complex, depending on the generating mechanism, e.g., increasing flood magnitudes where floods result of heavy rainfall and possibly decreasing magnitudes where floods are generated by spring snowmelt. Climate change is likely to cause an increase of the risk of riverine flooding across much of Europe. Projections of flood hazard in Europe based on climatic and hydrological models, reviewed in this paper, illustrate possible changes of recurrence of a 100-year flood (with probability of exceedance being 1-in-100 years) in Europe. What used to be a 100-year flood in the control period is projected to become either more frequent or less frequent in the future time horizon of concern. For a large part of the continent, large flooding is projected to become more commonplace in future, warmer climate. Due to the large uncertainty of climate projections, it is currently not possible to devise a scientifically-sound procedure for redefining design floods (e.g. 100-year flood) in order to adjust flood defenses. For the time being, we recommend to adjust design floods using a “climate change factor” approach.

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Notes

  1. Projections on the country level has also been performed, too, but are here omitted due to space limitation.

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Acknowledgements

The authors acknowledge constructive remarks of two anonymous referees that helped the authors in improving this contribution.

Author information

Author notes

  1. Nicola Lugeri

    Present address: Institute for Environmental Protection and Research (ISPRA), Rome, Italy

  2. Rutger Dankers

    Present address: Met Office, Hadley Centre, Exeter, Devon, UK

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Institute for Agricultural and Forest Environment, Polish Academy of Sciences, Poznań, Poland

    Zbigniew W. Kundzewicz, Iwona Pińskwar, Tomasz Dysarz & Piotr Matczak

  2. Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, Potsdam, Germany

    Zbigniew W. Kundzewicz

  3. Joint Research Centre, Ispra, Italy

    Nicola Lugeri & Rutger Dankers

  4. Institute of Engineering Innovation, The University of Tokyo, Tokyo, Japan

    Yukiko Hirabayashi

  5. Institute of Physical Geography, University of Frankfurt/M., Frankfurt am Main, Germany

    Petra Döll

  6. University of Life Sciences, Poznań, Poland

    Tomasz Dysarz

  7. IIASA, Laxenburg, Austria

    Stefan Hochrainer

  8. Institute of Sociology, Adam Mickiewicz University, Poznań, Poland

    Piotr Matczak

Authors
  1. Zbigniew W. Kundzewicz
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  2. Nicola Lugeri
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  3. Rutger Dankers
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Zbigniew W. Kundzewicz.

Additional information

Guest Editors: Zbigniew W. Kundzewicz and Reinhard Mechler

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Kundzewicz, Z.W., Lugeri, N., Dankers, R. et al. Assessing river flood risk and adaptation in Europe—review of projections for the future. Mitig Adapt Strateg Glob Change 15, 641–656 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11027-010-9213-6

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11027-010-9213-6

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