Flood Risk in Europe: Analysis of Exposure in 13 Countries

In the last decades, dramatic river flooding has occurred in several regions of Europe and the damage reached unprecedented proportions. There are two basic reasons for this: the increased frequency of extreme weather events and built-up areas which continue to grow mainly in flood prone areas, affect flooding in many ways. The protection of human and capital assets from natural hazards is high in the agenda of the European policies and is directly addressed in the European Regional Development Fund for the programming period 2007-2013. This technical note describes a contribution to the evaluation of exposures to flood risk in 13 out of the 15 Countries that can receive support from Structural Funds under the Convergence objective: Spain, Greece, Portugal, Hungary, Poland, Slovenia, Czech Republic, Slovakia, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Romania and Bulgaria.