Floods constitute a persistent and serious problem throughout the United States and many other parts of the world. They are responsible for losses amounting to billions of dollars and scores of deaths annually. Virtually all parts of the nation--coastal, moun tainous and rural--are affected by them. Two aspects of the problem of flooding that have long been topics of scientific inquiry are flood frequency and risk analyses. Many new, even improved, tech niques have recently been developed for performing these analyses. Nevertheless, actual experience points out that the frequency of say a 100-year flood, in lieu of being encountered on the average once in one hundred years, may be as little as once in 25 years. It is therefore appropriate to pause and ask where we are, where we are going and where we ought to be going with regard to the technology of flood frequency and risk analyses. One way to address these ques tions is to provide a forum where people from all quarters of the world can assemble, discuss and share their experience and expertise pertaining to flood frequency and risk analyses. This is what con stituted the motivation for organizing the International Symposium on Flood Frequency and Risk Analyses held May 14-17, 1986, at Louisiana State University, Baton Rouge, Louisiana.

The third edition of this best-selling textbook combines thorough coverage of fundamental theory with a wide ranging treatment of contemporary applications. The chapters on sediment transport, river engineering, wave theory and coastal engineering have been extensively updated, and there is a new chapter on computational modelling. The authors illustrate applications of computer and physical simulation techniques in modern design. The book is an invaluable resource for students and practitioners of civil, environmental, and public health engineering and associated disciplines. It is comprehensive, fully illustrated and contains many worked examples, taking a holistic view of the water cycles, many aspects of which are critical for future sustainable development.

After five decades, the field of Statistical Hydrology continues to evolve and remains a very active area of investigation. Researchers continue to examine various distributions, methods of estimation of parameters, and problems related to regionalization. However, much of this research appears in journals and reports and usually in a form not easily accessible to practitioners and students. Flood Frequency Analysis answers this need by presenting the most popular and promising distributions and estimation procedures in a unified format. It offers the details that provide the basis for the computations, and illustrates each procedure with real data.