Climate change is expected to result in an increase in the frequency and intensity of extreme weather events. In turn, this will result in more frequent occurrences of extreme flood events, such as flash flooding and large-scale river flooding. This being the case, there is a need for more accurate flood risk assessment schemes, particularly in areas prone to extreme flooding. This study investigates what type of flood hazard assessment methods should be used for assessing the flood hazard to people caused by extreme flooding. Two flood hazard assessment criteria were tested, namely: a widely used, empirically derived method, and recently introduced, physically based and experimentally calibrated method. The two selected flood hazard assessment methods were: (1) validated against experimental data, and (2) used to assess flood hazard indices for two different extreme flood events, namely: the 2010 Kostanjevica na Krki extreme river flood and the 2007 Železniki flash flood. The results obtained in this study suggest that in the areas prone to extreme flooding, the flood hazard indices should be based on using the formulae derived for a mechanics-based analysis, as these formulations consider all of the physical forces acting on a human body in floodwaters, take into account the rapid changes in the flow regime, which often occur for extreme flood events, and enable a rapid assessment of the degree of flood hazard risk in a short time period, a feature particularly important when assessing flood hazard indices for high Froude numbers flows.

The construction and demolition sector is one of the biggest consumers of natural resources in the world and consequently, one of the biggest waste producers worldwide. The proper management of construction and demolition waste (CDW) can provide major benefits for the construction and recycling industry. However, the recycling rate of CDW is relatively low, as there is still a lack of confidence in the quality of recycled CDW materials. Therefore, new research projects are looking for innovative solutions within recycling of CDW in order to overcome uncertainties currently associated with the use of construction products made from recycled or re-used CDW. In this paper, a “cradle-to-cradle” life cycle assessment (LCA) study has been conducted to investigate the environmental performance of the prefabricated geopolymeric façade cladding panels made from large fractions of CDW. The LCA results indicate that the majority of the environmental burden arises within the manufacturing stage; however, the environmental burden can be reduced with simple optimisation of the manufacturing process. Furthermore, the environmental impact of the prefabricated geopolymeric façade cladding panels is generally lower than the environmental burden associated with the façade cladding panels made from virgin materials.

Flood risk assessment is generally studied using flood simulation models; however, flood risk managers often simplify the computational process; this is called a “simplification strategy”. This study investigates the appropriateness of the “simplification strategy” when used as a flood risk assessment tool for areas prone to flash flooding. The 2004 Boscastle, UK, flash flood was selected as a case study. Three different model structures were considered in this study, including: (1) a shock-capturing model, (2) a regular ADI-type flood model and (3) a diffusion wave model, i.e. a zero-inertia approach. The key findings from this paper strongly suggest that applying the “simplification strategy” is only appropriate for flood simulations with a mild slope and over relatively smooth terrains, whereas in areas susceptible to flash flooding (i.e. steep catchments), following this strategy can lead to significantly erroneous predictions of the main parameters—particularly the peak water levels and the inundation extent. For flood risk assessment of urban areas, where the emergence of flash flooding is possible, it is shown to be necessary to incorporate shock-capturing algorithms in the solution procedure, since these algorithms prevent the formation of spurious oscillations and provide a more realistic simulation of the flood levels.

River oil spills are generally more frequent and pose greater environmental and public health risk than coastal and offshore oil spills. However, the river oil spill research has received a negligible amount of academic attention in the past three decades, while at the same time the coastal and offshore oil spill research has expanded and evolved tremendously. This paper provides the state-of-the-art review of river oil spill modeling and summarizes the developments in the field from 1994 to present. The review has revealed that the majority of the gaps in knowledge still remain. Thus, there is a need for (i) experimental studies in order to develop and validate new models and better understand the main physicochemical processes, (ii) studies on inter-linking of the governing processes, such as hydrodynamics, advection–dispersion, and weathering processes, (iii) adaptation and validation of coastal and offshore oil spill models for applications in riverine environments, and (iv) development of river oil spill remote sensing systems and detection techniques. Finally, there is a need to more actively promote the importance of river oil spill research and modeling in the context of environmental and public health protection, which would form the basis for obtaining more research funding and thus more academic attention.

Flood hazard maps are one of the main components of any flood risk management strategy. It is predicted that the degree of flood risk is going to significantly increase in the future due to climatic and environmental changes, and hence it is increasingly important that state-of-the-art methods are implemented for assessing human stability in floodwaters. Therefore, this paper focuses on proposing more accurate and detailed guidelines for predicting flood hazard indices in small and steep river basins or catchments, prone to the occurrence of flash flooding. The results obtained in this study indicate that for river basins with an average bed gradient greater than 1% (i.e. torrential or flashy river basins or catchments), then the flood hazard indices should be predicted using criteria which are based on the physical interpretation of the processes that affect the human stability in floodwaters, i.e. mechanics based and experimentally calibrated flood hazard assessment methods.