Management of Flood and Related Disasters
Contents: Preface. 1. Flood Hazards, Control and Management. 2. Dams and Dambursts. 3. Tsunami and EI Nino. 4. Water and Groundwater Hazards. Bibliography. Index.
“A flood is too much water in the wrong place, whether it be an inundated city or a single street or field flooded due to a blocked drain. Among the trigger mechanisms are dam or levee failures; more rain than the landscape can dispose of; the torrential rains of hurricanes; tsunami; ocean storm surges; rapid snow melts; ice floes blocking a river’ and burst water mains.
But most of the rapidly growing Third World flood disasters are caused by humans making their land more prone to floods and themselves more vulnerable.
Floods affect more people than any other disaster except droughts. But there are many more flood disasters than droughts, and the number affected by floods in increasing much more rapidly than those suffering droughts. According to figures from the US Office for Foreign Disaster Assistance (USOFDA) 18.5 million people per year were affected by droughts during the 1960s and 24.4 million during the 1970s. Floods affected 5.2 million a year in the 1960s compared with 15.4 in the 1970s – an almost threefold increase. Over 1964-82, floods killed 80,000 people and affected 221 million worldwide.
In 1983 there were major floods in Bangladesh, China, India, Nepal and Pupua New Guinea; there was also flooding in Argentina, Bolivia, Cuba, Equador, Paraguay and Peru. In 1983 the League of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies launched eight international appeals to assist a total of 1.6 million flood victims in five Latin American Nations.
Until rain reaches the ground, humans have little influence over it. But whether water, once on the ground, becomes “a productive resource or a destructive hazard depends very largely on man’s management of vegetation and soils’, according to a 1974 UNESCO report.
This Book will be of immense help to all those contemplating to acquire expert knowledge of the mitigation strategies for controlling floods and related disasters.” (Jacket)
