Finding Suitable Measures for the Future Today The challenge therefore is to now prepare and take suitable measures for handling the consequences of climate change, despite the current scientific uncertainties with regard to the extent, the timing and the concrete local effects of climate change. Adaptive measures are particularly called for in the areas of water and soil in order to maintain their different usages. It is important that the measures be designed to remain flexible and effective over a broad range of climate changes. An example: Flood events can increase because of climate change; this should be alleviated by creating additional flood plains. In some areas higher dykes may become necessary. Therefore, some regions in Germany are already building new dykes with broader bases, so that – should it become necessary in the future – the height of the dykes can be increased more easily and cost-effectively. What this example shows: adaptive water management and water protection measures must be designed looking ahead long-term, since water management investments and decisions often establish the conditions for decades to come. Water management today must be set up to react both to gradual changes and to extreme events such as droughts, heavy precipitation and floods. Problems from immediate extreme situations, like floods and low water levels, have always had to be dealt with in recent history.
Flood Risk Management in Europe Floods have natural causes and are a part of nature. The biotic communities in rivers and marsh lands are adapted to changing water levels. Problems have developed and are developing only as a result of major human interference with the course of rivers. This was done for the purpose of creating space for developing settlements, to improve navigability, enable more intensive agriculture, for hydroelectric power use and, paradoxically, for flood protection. These interferences led to the loss of natural flood plains and marsh lands and, as a consequence, to fundamental changes in the drainage behaviour of waters. As a result of shortening and straightening river courses, flood waves today flow off at higher velocity and volume. The probability and intensity of flood events may increase due to climate change. Human settlement, industrial settlement and other human activities along rivers create material wealth in close proximity to water – which also increases the potential for damage in flood-endangered areas. In order to limit future flood damage both nationally and internationally, long-term strategies are being developed at catchment area level. Increasingly, flood risk is at the centre of these efforts. Water management administrations no longer only examine the danger of a flood event, but link the probability of its occurrence to the damage to be 47