Extreme values for coastal, estuarine, and riverine environments

The increasing pressures associated to the development of coastal zones and near river courses have enhanced the sensitivity of these areas to natural processes such as flooding or erosion. The characterization of the associated drivers and responses, particularly under extreme conditions, has become an acute need for managing those areas and the risks for uses and resources there located. This paper summarizes the work done within Task 2 of the EU Integrated Research Project FLOODsite in the extreme distribution functions related to flood and erosion hazards. A wide range of models, parameters and fitting techniques were applied to a variety of geographic and climatic environments. The emphasis focused on selecting models and techniques based on a parsimony principle, to propose robust extrapolations of characteristic variables for a reliable flood hazard assessment.