Literature review. An overview of the state of research on flood prevention

Abstract

This literature review comments references selected so as to give an overview of the present state of researches on flood prevention. The scientific community is developing concepts and tools for risk integrated management, within the framework of sustainable development. This work is a great help for regional, national and European policies. Our list focuses on structural measures achieving flood mitigation by retention or slowing down. It is extended to flood processes, project design and relevant tools, as well as objective and integrated methods for project assessment. Many authors endeavour to reconcile flood management and environment conservation. Thus review shows a great diversity of hazard mitigation methods and assessment procedures. Conclusions about the impact of land-use on floods are somewhat diverging, or at least difficult to generalize. Similar techniques exits in urban areas for rainfall management, with different constraints less available room; this does not enter in our scope although a few references are given for comparison (Marsalek and Chocat, 2002 ; Certu, 2003).