A DATABASE DESIGN OF MAJOR PAST FLOOD EVENTS IN ROMANIA FROM NATIONAL AND INTERNATIONAL INVENTORIES

Abstract

Floods are one of the most significant natural hazards in Romania, causing losses of human lives and important damages to buildings and infrastructure. Romania is recognized among the most flood prone European countries. This work was conducted in the framework of the VULMIN project, aiming to extract the available key indicators of major and historical flood events in Romania, as a basis for better understanding the patterns of socio-economic vulnerability to floods at regional and national scales and of the adaptive capacity of living areas along the main rivers of this country. The existing databases on flood records at global (e.g. EM-DAT International Disaster Database, Dartmouth Flood Observatory, GLIDE database) and national level (the preliminary flood risk assessment conducted within the framework of the EU Flood Directive), research projects (e.g. Hydrate, Danube Flood Risk) and the available literature have been explored to collect indicators of intensity, magnitude, extent and impacts associated to past major flood events recorded in Romania. Starting from the scientific and reporting needs, taking into account the reliable information found in the documented databases, the main attributes of floods and flash-floods events has been embedded into a proposed database to be developed in the project, which may be useful for further analyses related to hydrological changes associated to climate change