Floods - a Natural Hazard
The damage due to several flood events through the last couple years and their effects on people and environment have called attention to limits and deficits in flood protection in Germany. As a consequence the national research programme “Risk Management of Extreme Flood Events”, called RIMAX, funded by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) was initiated. Between 2005 and 2010 38 projects were supported by 20 million Euros in total.
The aim of RIMAX was to develop and implement improved instruments of flood risk management by the integration of different disciplines and several participants. It was focused on extreme flood events in river basins which means events with a return period of more than a 100 years and a highly destructive potential.
In these research projects were actively involved universities and other research facilities as well as federal and local authorities to ensure the efficient implementation of research results into practice. That way RIMAX contributed to the realization of the 5-Punkte-Programm of flood risk management by the Federal Government of 15 September 2002.
