About this Research Topic

Background

Extreme flooding, whether coastal, riverine, urban, or a combination, continue to cause significant loss of lives and property, as well as business discontinuities and public health impacts, across the world. Protective infrastructures, such as dams, reservoirs, levees, and sea walls, are designed to mitigate flooding hazards, while critical infrastructures, ranging from buildings and bridges to interdependent transportation-water-energy-communication systems, are designed to ensure lifeline functions. Changes in the drivers of flooding, such as climate or land use changes, along with changes in the exposure and vulnerability, such as urbanization and location of assets to risk-prone areas, must be considered. Embedding resilience into the infrastructure systems under these conditions includes designing or retrofitting based on anticipatory flooding hazards, as well as developing operational and recovery strategies that are informed by flooding risks and the associated uncertainties.

Recent advances in embedding resilience to extreme flooding for infrastructure systems and lifelines include performance-based and nature-inspired design, gray-green infrastructure and flexible planning, and optimal robustness, recovery, and adaptation strategies that consider the interconnected nature of assets along with the unwieldy uncertainties in the drivers of flooding and the consequence thereof. In addition to the science and engineering principles, developing resilience requires active participation from stakeholders and institutions, besides the development of financial and insurance related incentives and urban or regional plans. The design, operational and recovery solutions need to account for the complexities in coupled natural, human-engineered, and social systems, ranging from the drivers of flooding to the exposure, vulnerability, and policy viability.

This collection invites submissions that are focused on the resilience of protective or lifeline infrastructures and techno-social systems to current and anticipated extreme flooding. Articles that focus on understanding the drivers of extreme flooding, or the engineering principles of infrastructure resilience to such flooding, or stakeholder engagements, institutional commitments, and financial incentives, or a combination, are strongly encouraged. Interdisciplinary themes that attempt to connect disciplinary strengths while remaining focused on solutions are particularly encouraged. Original research articles, technical and field notes, practice-oriented case studies, disciplinary and interdisciplinary review articles, and commentaries that are directional to the research or practice communities are encouraged.

Keywords: Flooding, Hydraulic infrastructures, Lifeline infrastructure networks, extreme floods, infrastructures design and operations, building back better infrastructures, risk management, resilient infrastructures, flood resilience, water resources engineering

Important note: All contributions to this Research Topic must be within the scope of the section and journal to which they are submitted, as defined in their mission statements. Frontiers reserves the right to guide an out-of-scope manuscript to a more suitable section or journal at any stage of peer review.

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