Chapter 1: Introduction

As highlighted regularly in the media, floods have a significant impact on communities located in floodplains. How often flooding occurs and the impacts it has on communities both vary considerably, and can change over time. Flood behaviour can be influenced by humans modifying catchment areas and floodplains. These changes, along with decisions about whether, where and how to develop land within the floodplain, and whether and how to mitigate flood impacts, all influence the flood risk to communities.

The management of these impacts is therefore important to these communities, and grows in importance with the scale and frequency of the impacts that floods have on them and the effort needed in managing, responding and recovering from floods.