Flood Mitigation Approaches: Selected Cases Across Europe, Oceania and Asia

Abstract

Flood is natural phenomenon that cannot becompletelycontrolled by man. Floodis a global problem. Even urban areas whichhave good development planning and drainage systemsare susceptible to floods. Flooding in urban area is usually associated with poor drainage system maintenance, failure to plan drainage system, area development is not planned properly,and climate change factors. Typically,engineering measuresare meanttoreduce severity of flood problems and theyare quite costly. Goal of this paper is to assess the various mitigation approaches that have beenused to mitigate floodsacross Europe, Oceania and Asia continents. Selected casestudies involvingthe North Sea flood, as well as floods in the Netherlands, Scotland, New Zealand, Australia, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Singapore and Malaysiawere considered.Approaches that were highlighted include construction of dam, breakwater, canal, and pumping system. It has alsobeenfound that flood solution methods by way ofsourcecontrolis not so popular to be fully practiced. Hence, the sustainability of good development isactually a solution to problem of flooding, especially to mitigateflash floods that often occur in an urban areas.