Experiences and trends of flood management in China

摘要

China has been frequently hit by big floods and suffered from flood disasters.The flood causedmainly by storm rainfall with large coverage and high concentration predominates the flood disasters in plainarea of the seven major rivers of China, despite of the fact that isolated local storm frequently produces flashfloods, land slides and even dam failures in mountainous regions.The integrated approach of flood managementin China is comprehensive and complex.No solution can be made without considering the basic fact that is Chinahas its huge population and is densely inhabited in limited flood prone areas in middle and down stream of sevenmajor rivers.Despite the fact that China is short of water especially in north part of the country, however the conflictbetween the flood and inhabitants in these areas has been increasingly acute.This is partly due to rapid populationgrowth during long historical period and partly due to the problems in flood management.Havingreviewed past floods and flood management strategies, government and the public came to deeply realize thatflood management has to be closely integrated with the land use plan while taking into full account the populationissue in the flood prone areas and that flood is a natural phenomenon which can not be eliminated and alsocan not be totally under control.Since water shortage is another typical case, there is a need to promote a specialmanagement method in order to optimize the use of flood storage and detention basins and multi-purpose use ofreservoirs.There is a trend to vary the flood level of the reservoirs during the flood season in order to make fulluse of flood water as for the effective use of floodplains.Meanwhile, the national flood plan stresses the importanceof flood risk management on the basis of delineated flood plains, flood storage and detention basins andflood protective areas.The flood insurance is proposed to be a mighty economic tool in flood management.