Advances in Large Scale Flood Monitoring and Detection

Changes related to climate, land use, population growth, and urbanization are deeply affecting river basin hydrology. The evolution of such factors is making more and more complex the understanding of hydrological processes amplifying impact of extremes. In this context, floods are increasing in number, magnitude and impact, because several of the mentioned factors are concurring in a systematic growth of floods risk. Among these aspects, climate change is certainly one of the most controversial and difficult to quantify. At the same time, the steady growth of impervious surfaces and reduction of forested areas amplifies undoubtedly the magnitude of floods. Moreover, the exponential expansion of urban areas, frequently placed nearby rivers, makes this issue even more critical. As a result, in the last few decades floods have exhibited a rapid upward trend worldwide. This is inducing the international community to invest significant effort for understanding the changed dynamics and projecting them in future flood frequency, in order to guarantee proper planning, management and real-time forecasts. As the environment evolves, strategies and methods of analysis related to flooding events and their impacts also have to keep up with the changing scenarios. In this framework, the challenge of this book is to describe the state-of-the-art on flood studies using innovative methods and identify the frontier of this research branch. With this aim, we stimulated a discussion on this topic collecting a number of manuscripts recently published on the journal Hydrology which focused on the benefit obtained by the use of new algorithms, new measurement systems and EO data for flood assessment, monitoring, and management.