**1. Introduction**

26 Studies on Water Management Issues

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Climate change research has revealed that the frequency of extreme weather phenomena with increasing damage to human assets has been gradually growing worldwide (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change [IPCC], 2007). The likelihood of increasing frequency of heavy precipitation events is assessed as 'likely' for the last four decades of the 20th century and 'very likely' for the 21st century. This also means that over most regions of the Earth's land surface an ever growing proportion of total precipitation will fall in the form of heavy rainfalls (Burroughs, 2003). The intensification trend of tropical cyclone activity, observed in some regions since 1970, will probably also continue in the 21st century. As a consequence, rainfall events concentrated in time and space are expected to lead to serious local flooding in many parts of the world.

Floods are remarkable hydrometeorological phenomena and forceful agents of geomorphic evolution in most physical geographical belts and, from the viewpoint of human society, among the most important environmental hazards. Except for extreme environments, floodplains and the immediate surroundings of streams are usually densely inhabited areas and, therefore, they are of high vulnerability to floods. According to the European Environment Agency (EEA, 2010), floods rank as number one on the list of natural disasters in Europe over the past decade. Authors of the report claim that "the events resulting in the largest overall losses were the floods in Central Europe (2002, over EUR 20 billion), in Italy, France and the Swiss Alps (2000, about EUR 12 billion) and in the United Kingdom (2007, over EUR 4 billion)" (p. 8.). With accumulating knowledge on the water regime of major rivers, the inundation hazard from riverine floods can be defined with some precision. To estimate the magnitude of this hazard in small catchments, however, poses more problems.
