Flood Management and Flood Disaster Mitigation Measures

The 5th International Conference on Flood Management (ICFM5) was held on September 27-29, 2011 in Tokyo under the umbrella title “Floods: from risk to opportunity” focused on flood management and disaster mitigation measures in its plenary, oral, and poster sessions. Out of over 250 presented papers, 120 manuscripts – far more than expected – were contributed for post-publication in the Journal of Flood Risk Management, the IAHS Red Book and the Journal of Disaster Research (JDR). Editorial staff members of the JDR, which was independent of ICFM5, attended the conference to survey research activities in related study fields and to announce JDR strategies to participants. The ICHARM scientific committee supervising ICFM5 post-publications is well acquainted with JDR, which is one of the reasons for agreeing on this special issue. The 13 manuscripts presented for consideration by JDR concern the following topics: – Flood forecasting – Basic tools for evaluating inundation flows – Flood management practices and policies – Flood plain management – Relations between human activities and floods These topics range from novel studies to public statements and have been reviewed as papers, reviews, and survey reports. This resulted in 9 papers recommended for the special issue – 4 topics for papers, 1 topic for review, and 4 topics for reports. We thank the authors for their contributions and revisions and the reviewers for their invaluable comments. We also thank the ICHARM committee members for introducing authors to special publications for JDR.