Floods are natural hazards whose effects can deeply affect the economic and environmental equilibria of a region. Quality of life of people living in areas close to rivers depends on both the risk that a flood would occur and the reliability of flood forecast, warning and control systems.
Tools for forecasting and mitigating floods have been developed through research in the recent past. Two innovations currently influence flood hazard mitigation, after many decades of lack of significant progress: they are the development of new technologies for real-time flood forecast and...

An integrated approach to environmental data management is necessitated by the complexity of the environmental problems that need to be addressed, coupled with the interdisciplinary approach that needs to be adopted to solve them. Agenda 21 of the Rio Environmental Conference mandated international programmes and organizations to take steps to develop common data and information management plans, and steps have been taken in this direction.