Implementation of the flood risk management directive in selected European countries

Abstract

Flood events are a recurrent threat to economic developments and can jeopardize human existence. In order to reduce the flood risks in Europe on a sustainable basis, the European Union adopted the Flood Risk Management Directive in 2007. The implementation of the directive in the national laws of all member states has laid the foundation for intergovernmental integrated flood risk management on an European scale. The following article is intended to compare and briefly assess the implementation process on inland waters at the technical level in selected European countries in the middle of the process. It covers the different basic structural, methodological, and data conditions for preparing the preliminary flood risk assessment, the flood hazard maps, the flood risk maps, and the flood risk management plans as a result of two EU projects. The technical differences in the various European countries need to be reduced in the next cycles of implementation of the Flood Risk Management Directive.