In 1997 disastrous flooding running through the Czech Republic, Poland, Germany took the lives of a great number of people and caused economic damage estimated in tens of billions of dollars. Flooding of the Yangtze river in 1998 killed more than 3000 people, dislocated 230 million souls, and caused direct damage of more than $ 45 billion. Both the general public and the experts are asking what we can learn from these recent events to reduce loss of life and flood damage.
The 1997 floods were dealt with by experts from the Czech Republic, Poland and Germany, who presented timely reports on combatting floods, both success stories and shortcomings. This experience is further extended by reports from experts drawn from 13 other countries, developing a broad overview of flood risk management, covering the ecosystem approach to flood management, including socioeconomic issues, flood impacts on water quality, human health, and natural ecosystems.

Zusammenfassung
Proceedings of the NATO Advanced Research Workshop on Coping with Flash Floods: Lessons Learned from Experience, Malenovice, Czech Republic, May 16-21, 1999

Inhalt
1 Flood Analysis and Recent Floods.- Overview of Flood Issues in Contemporary Water Management.- Improvement of Flood Protection in Czech Republic.- 1997/98 Floods in the Czech Republic: Hydrological Evaluation.- Regional Estimation of Design Flood Discharges for River Restoration in Mountainous Basins of Northern Slovakia.- Flood Flow Regionalization Based on L - Moments and Its Use With the Index Flood Method.- The First Use of Hec-5 in Flood Analysis in Turkey.- The Great Flood of 1997 in Poland: The Truth and Myth.- Achievements and Future Needs Towards Improved Flood Protection in the Oder River Basin: Results of the Eu-expert Meeting on The Oder Flood in Summer '87.- The 1998 Extreme Flood on the Tisza River.- Causes and Peculiarities of Recent Floods on the Dniester River.- Modelling Tools the Key Elements for Evaluation of Impacts of Anthropogenic Activities on Flood Generation, With Reference To The 1997 Morava River Flooding.- Postwar Changes in Land Use in Former West Germany and the Increased Number of Inland Floods.- Anthropogenic Impacts on the Formation of Flash Floods and Measures for Their Compensation.- 2 Flood Impacts on the Society, Economy and Environment.- 1998 Flood Damages and Remedial Action.- A Database of Historical Flood Events in the Netherlands.- 3 Flood Managementoverview and Nonstructural Measures.- Flood Management in Poland.- Twenty Years of Flood Risk Mapping Under the Canadian National Flood Damage Reduction Program.- The Importance of Maps for Floodplain Management and Flood Insurance.- Urban Watershed Flood Mitigation Planning and Floodplain Management.- The National Flood Insurance Program: A U.S. Approach to Flood Loss Reduction.- Flood Disasters - Insurance Aspects Including the 1997 Odra Floods.- Recent Experience withThe Use of Mathematical Models in Flood Action Planning and Flood Forecasting & Warning.- Recent Trends in Hydrological Flood Warning Systems Development: The Czech Experience.- Operative Control and Prediction of Floods Events in the River Odra Basin.- Hydroinformatics for River Flood Management.- Floodss A Flood Operational Decision Support System.- Real-time Flood Forecasting: Operational Experience and Recent Advances.- Analytical Reproduction of Radar Images of Rainfall Spatial (2d) Distribution As an Input to Gis Based Flood Modelling.- Lessons Learned From Recent Floods.- Emergency Flood Control Operation During the 1997 Red River Flood.- 4 Flood Management structural Measures.- Investigations of the Effects of On-site Storm Water Management Measures in Urban and Agricultural Areas on Floods.- Geographical Information Systems Used as A Planning-tool for On-site Stormwater Management Measures.- Selected Problems of Flood Protection of Towns.- Urban Flood Control-technical Support to the Diagnosis and Rehabilitation of Critical Areas in the City of Lisbon.- Flood Mitigation in Urbanised Areas.- Regional Impacts of Levee Construction and Channelization, Middle Mississippi River, USA.- Risk of Flood Levee Overflowing.- Emergency Flood Reservoirs in the Tisza Basin.- Action Plan on Flood Defence and Control Strategies for Flood Retention on the Upper Rhine.- 5 Post-flood Measures.- Damage Caused by the 1997 Floods, Its Repair and Proposed Alternatives of Flood Control Measures.- Flood Damages and Inundated Land Reclamation.- 6 New Methods and Tools.- Forecasting of River Discharges in the Presence of Chaos and Noise.- Advances in Transfer Function Based Flood Forecasting.