Abstract
As one of the high exposure areas to natural disasters in the world, China has been afflicted by frequent and severe floods throughout history. This chapter analyzes flood hazard and flood losses in China, and reveals their spatial patterns and temporal changes in the past 60 years, from the beginning of the People’s Republic of China. The analyses cover several spatial scales—the national, typical flooding area, and county levels. The chapter outlines the flood disaster formation processes by examining flood hazards, human-environmental conditions under which the disasters occur, and exposure units to establish the basis for flood risk assessment. An integrated indicator method based on recurrence intervals and climatic and geomorphological factors, as well as the occurrences of historical floods is used for flood risk zoning. Finally, this chapter takes the great floods in 1998 as an example to introduce China’s experience and lessons learned in coping with flood disasters.
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- 1.
The second topographic ladder refers to the area east of the Kunlun, Qilian, and Hengduan mountains and west of the Daxing’anling, Taihang, Wu, and Xuefeng mountains.
- 2.
The Hu Huanyong Line is also called the Heihe--Tengchong Line, which is known internationally as the “Hu Line.” It stretches from the city of Heihe in the north to Tengchong County in the south diagonally across China. The line marks a striking contrast in the distribution of China’s population: the area west of this line accounts for 57 % of the total land area but has only 6 % of the population of China; the area east of this line accounts for 43 % of the total land area but has 94 % of the population.
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Du, J., Kong, F., Du, S., Li, N., Li, Y., Shi, P. (2016). Floods in China. In: Shi, P. (eds) Natural Disasters in China. IHDP/Future Earth-Integrated Risk Governance Project Series. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-662-50270-9_5
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