The Flood Management Education Platform is a repository of flood educational resources. It aims to promote understanding of flood generation, propagation, mitigation and the flood management needs.

Floods are a natural part of the hydrological cycle. It is reported that flood disasters account for about a third of all natural disasters (by number and economic losses). In addition, they are responsible for over half of the deaths associated with all such disasters. What is more, there is the trend of an increasing number of deaths being due to floods.

This information is reflected in the attention given to floods by the international media. Every year we are made aware of serious floods that lead to significant loss of life in one part of the world or another.

In recent years there have been catastrophic floods in Bangladesh (1997), Ecuador (1997), Mozambique (1997), China (1998), Poland (2000), Czech Republic (2001), Indonesia/Thailand/Sri Lanka (2004), USA (2005) to name but a few countries.

Flood management is becoming more and more important to the society, and flood modelling is seen as an integral part of flood management. Models are used for planning and design as well as for forecasting floods so that mitigating measures can be taken in time. Decision support systems (DSS) based on models are increasingly being used by engineers and scientists in flood management.

This platform is aimed to provide information that will help flood managers/ water managers/ flood modellers/ engineers and scientists dealing with floods in understanding:

• How are floods generated and how do they develop in time?
• What are better ways of designing flood protection schemes using models?
• What models can be used for forecasting floods?
• How should model results be used to inform decision makers?