Flooding is a natural phenomenon, an intrinsic part of the natural cycle that serves important ecological functions. However, in highly anthropogenic-developed landscapes they cause serious consequences for human lives, societies in general, and their economy. Therefore comprehensive disaster risk reduction policies have been promoted in the last decade including actions on the development of early warning systems at local as well as regional scale. This report provides a brief global overview on the occurrences and damages resulting from riverine floods over the past decades. The first part of the report then summarises European policies put in place to deal with flooding in the different phases of the disaster management cycle addressing the prevention, preparedness, response, and recovery phase. This is followed by a description of the development of flood early warning capabilities at European scale, how such a system fits into the responsibility chain between national services and EU civil protection and what the potential financial benefit of flood early warning systems in Europe amounts to. The second part of the report addresses the gaps in flood early warning systems in Africa and presents a description of the African Flood Forecasting System (AFFS), which has been built in analogy to EFAS, but which is still in experimental stage

THIELEN DEL POZO Jutta;  THIEMIG Vera;  PAPPENBERGER Florian;  REVILLA ROMERO Beatriz;  SALAMON Peter;  DE GROEVE Tom;  HIRPA Feyera Aga; 

2016-01-20

Publications Office of the European Union

JRC97266

978-92-79-52767-8 (print),    978-92-79-52768-5,   

1018-5593 (print),    1831-9424 (online),   

EUR 27533,    OP LB-NA-27533-EN-C (print),    OP LB-NA-27533-EN-N (online),   

https://publications.jrc.ec.europa.eu/repository/handle/JRC97266,   

10.2788/624063 (print),    10.2788/46941 (online),