E D I T O R I A L

Journal of FloodRiskManagement

DOI:10.1111/j.1753-318X.2008.00008.x

Flood management policy across Europe has changed. The

European Directive on the assessment and management of

flood risk entered into force on 26 November 2007. The

Directive now must be incorporated into national legislation

in all 27 EU member states and it sets out a framework for

delivering improved flood risk management in all countries.

The development of the Directive with less than 2 years from

the publication of a first draft in January 2006 is rapid

compared with many other directives.

The immediate impetus behind the new Directive lies in

the significant flooding in central Europe in the preceding

decade, especially in the Oder (Odra) river catchment

in the summer of 1997 affecting the Czech republic, Poland

and Germany and in the Elbe (Labe) river catchment in

2002 affecting the Czech Republic and Germany again.

However, earlier floods in other parts of Europe had high-

lighted the potential damages from flooding including

the flood in the Rhine in 1993 and 1995 and in the Po basin

in 1994.

These three earlier events had led to pressure on the

European Commission to initiate action on flooding but at

that time the scale of the problem and international action

required was not fully evident. An initial action was to

increase research funded on flooding as a natural hazard

including the RIBAMOD ‘concerted action’ that explored

the state of the art in flood management at the time

(1995–1998) and to identify potential future directions.

One of the outcomes was a recommendation from Professor

Kundzewicz based on his experience in Poland of the Oder

floods of considering flood management as a cycle of

pre-flood measures, emergency management during an event

and post-flood recovery. There followed several research

projects at a European level, particularly on the science and

technologies in flood forecasting.

In parallel with this research the major international river

commissions for the Rhine and for the Danube had also

started to prepare flood management policies and coordina-

tion on the scale of whole basins. Also another European

Directive – the Water Framework Directive (WFD) came into

force in late 2000, which provided a basis for the management

of the ecological status of water bodies and included flood

management although not as a primary objective.

Thus when, after the catalyst of Elbe flooding, the

European Water Directors from each member state met

and agreed to develop best practice guidelines, considerable

international links and professional agreement were already

in place. The resulting guidelines ‘best practices on flood

prevention, protection and mitigation’ were published in

2004 and within these the management framework pro-

posed by Kundzewicz is clearly visible. This was followed by

a ‘Communication’ from the European Commission on

Flood Risk Management – Flood Prevention, Protection

and Mitigation in July 2004 that set out an action pro-

gramme including legislation (i.e. the Directive). Significant

negotiations were needed to resolve the scope and degree of

prescriptive detail in the Directive. The resulting document

does allow for some discretion in individual countries on

the types of events and amount of information that must be

provided.

It is interesting to note the development of the titles of the

three documents from the focus on ‘prevention, protection

and mitigation’ of the Best Practices in 2004 through to

‘assessment and management of flood risks’ for the Directive

in 2007. These show a rapid journey in European policy

terms from a philosophy of flood control to the acceptance

that flood risks are managed.

The Directive covers all sources of flooding (not just

rivers, but coastal floods, urban and groundwater floods);

it requires planning at basin scale and has specific require-

ments for international basins; and in all cases, the potential

impacts of climate change on the flood conditions need to

be considered. The next steps in the implementation of the

Directive are as follows:

� National legislation (by late 2009)

� Preliminary flood risk assessments in all river basins (by

late 2011)

� Flood risk maps in all areas with significant risk (by late

2013) and

� Flood risk management plans (by late 2015).

The links between the WFD and the Floods Directive

(as it is commonly known) are fully recognised in the

Floods Directive with the requirement to use the same

boundaries and administrative structures wherever possible.

Thus the European working group that is discussing

the details of how the Directive will operate in practice is

called WG-F of the common implementation strategy

of the WFD. The activities of WG-F have already led to

compilations of current practice on flood forecasting and

J Flood Risk Management 1 (2008) 69–70 c� 2008 The AuthorsJournal Compilation c� 2008 Blackwell Publishing Ltd

flood mapping; and an expert group on land-use and floods

is also active.

An interesting and active area of overlap between the two

Directives is in the subject of ‘hydromorphology’, which

already is the topic of another international working group

of the WFD and covers the influence of human interven-

tions in the river system. Clearly, these include many

physical flood protection measures.

The launch of the Journal of Flood Risk Management is

timely and provides an ideal route for publication of papers

on the science and practice in flood risk management at a

time of increased professional activity arising from the

policy developments at the European scale.

Paul SamuelsAssociate Editor

Q1

J Flood Risk Management 1 (2008) 69–70c� 2008 The AuthorsJournal Compilation c� 2008 Blackwell Publishing Ltd

70 Editorial