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Natural flood management

Natural flood management (NFM) has been advocated as a sustainable alternative to traditional flood management. NFM is based upon the well‐established principle that instead of locally defending floodplains from inundation, it is possible to manipulate river flow at the catchment‐scale (catchment‐based flood management, CBFM) to reduce flood inundation downstream. NFM is a subset of CBFM because the focus is on more ‘natural’ approaches to doing this, even if the associated measures may not be strictly natural. The options for doing this are classified and explained in terms of: (1) reducing the rate of rapid runoff generation on hillslopes; (2) storage of water during high river flows; and (3) slowing flow by reducing the ease of connection between runoff sources and zones of potential flood inundation. NFM is argued to have potential at certain sizes of river catchment but it is argued that there are fundamental arguments and scientific uncertainties in concluding that its potential will also apply at larger spatial scales. WIREs Water 2017, 4:e1211. doi: 10.1002/wat2.1211