Floods in Norway

Recent research

Large floods in Norway
A comprehensive book on large floods in Norway has been published.

Summary of the book

• Norway has suffered repeatedly from floods, and the damage is well documented back to the late 17th century. The damage is, however, limited because of a low population density and until recently low vulnerability to flood damage.
• Some of the most severe events have occurred at the start or end of a sequence of very cold years, but there is always warm air involved in causing the heavy rainfall.
• There is an overabundance of rainfall floods in the summer and autumn in warm years.
• Floods alone take rarely lives in Norway, most fatalities during floods have been caused by such avalanches and landslides.

New Flood database in Norway

The Norwegian Water Resources and Energy Directorate (NVE) is developing a new Norwegian flood data base including historical flood information as well as information on new floods as soon as we receive information about flood damage. The database is based on flood events where each event assumes to be caused by the same meteorological conditions, and occurring within a geographically defined area. We have so far loaded information of almost 700 flood events to the data base from the 1340s to this year. The data base will be accessed through a map based user interface. We hope to make the system which we preliminary have named Flomatlas (or Flood Atlas in English) accessible on the internet. The system will give access to several topics, including the flood zone maps, which we have been developing after the large flood in 1995.

For more information contact: Lars Andreas Roald

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