Opportunities and Limitations of Specifying Flood Types

Flood types offer the opportunity to not only consider certain flood characteristics like the peak, shape or the volume jointly, but to incorporate information on the flood-generating processes into the analyses of flood events. Flood-generating processes encompass meteorological conditions as well as the catchment state. Both have significant impact on the resulting flood event. In hydrology, several flood type classifications exist, focusing on different aspects of flood-generating circumstances. In this chapter, the most common flood type classifications are introduced. When aiming to combine flood types and flood statistics, certain properties of flood classifications have to be fulfilled. These will be discussed at the end of this chapter.