Preface: Advances in flood risk assessment and management

Floods are among Earth's most common and most destructive natural hazards, affecting human lives and properties directly and indirectly around the world. The frequency and magnitude of extreme flooding have been increasing in many parts of the world in recent decades (see, e.g. Berghuijs et al., 2017; Blöschl et al., 2019a; Marijnissen et al., 2019), hampering human well-being and economic growth in both developed and developing countries. Flood risk management carries out the flood risk assessment and uses appropriate resources (human, finance, science and technology, and nature) to control the flood risk (Han, 2011), which is an urgent challenge for the scientific and engineering communities to address.

In a similar way to “Twenty-three unsolved problems in hydrology” (Blöschl et al., 2019b), despite decades of research in this field, there are still many unsolved problems in floods as well. This special issue “Flood Risk Assessment and Management” is an outcome of the session “Flood Risk Assessment and Management” in the Naturals Hazards Division at the European Geosciences Union (EGU) General Assembly held in Vienna, Austria. The session series has been organized annually at EGU since 2018. This special issue presents a wide range of in-depth research studies based on flood modelling (including hydrological modelling and hydrodynamic modelling), hazard mapping, flood damage and risk assessment as well as studies that focus on flood relief prioritization, mitigation strategies and flood policies. Extraordinary floods and debris flows are also included due to dam and dike breaks and extreme storms over gullies in mountain areas. The nine articles in this special issue are broadly introduced in the following three categories.