Record disasters such as earthquakes, hurricanes (or typhoons), tsunamis, widespread flooding and pollution, droughts, extremes of snowfalls and temperatures - all of which are associated with devastating losses and suffering - occur almost daily. Out of all natural disasters, floods in coastal regions are regarded as one of the most dangerous and harmful. According to the International Disaster Database (EM-DAT) such floods have shown the fastest rate of increase relative to other types of disasters (see also CRED 2004 and CRED 2011). However, most of these events, although commonly referred to as natural disasters, are not in fact the results of nature-related processes
alone. They are to an ever increasing extent directly attributable to various social, economic, historical, political and even cultural issues. Rapid urbanization in coastal areas combined with climate change and poor governance can lead to a significant increase in the risk of local surface flooding (pluvial) coinciding with high water levels in rivers (fluvial) and high tide or storm surges from the sea (coastal) posing a greater risk of devastation in coastal communities.
A particularly important part of the management of complex problems such as disasters due to extreme hydro-meteorological events is to understand the hazards formation over a range of spatial and temporal scales. For these purpose state of the art science and technology are used for better comprehension of the extreme events formation in today¿s climate and future changing climate conditions.