Unflooding Asia The Green Cities Way eBook

A continuing increase in disasters triggered by floods occurs almost daily even though our technological capabilities have grown rapidly and global economic growth per capita has doubled. This paradoxical situation proves that our earlier ways of thinking are inadequate and that we must shift our way of thinking and working. It has become obvious that most flood-related disasters, although commonly referred to as natural disasters, are not the result of nature-related processes alone. Some of the early efforts in dealing with floods and flood-related disasters were only concerned with the construction of engineering structures (e.g., levees, floodwalls, dams, embankments, storage basins, diversions, etc.) without significant consideration of aspects which are nowadays regarded as equally important, if not more important.