Guidance on flash flood management: recent experiences from central and eastern Europe

The increasingly variable climate in Europe has seen rising numbers of extreme flood events in the last decades, in the Danube, Odra and Elbe river basins just to name a few. The floods most perceived by the public are the large-scale riverine floods; however, there is evidence that the most deadly floods are those with short lead times - flash floods - which in Central and Eastern Europe have mostly a spatially limited character and can occur far away from major rivers. Those floods pose great challenges to the national meteorological and hydrological services, the emergency services and local communities, in the area of flood forecasting, warning, emergency preparedness and response This project has aimed at increasing the preparedness and response capacity of the local authorities and population in flash flood prone pilot communities to forecasts and warnings issued by respective authorities in order to reduce the vulnerability of the affected population.