extreme event
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The human kind has always been faced with weather and climatic vagaries, and related problems with water resource - having too little, or too much of it. More Water-related disasters, i.e. severe surplus or deficit of water, floods and droughts, have been more devastating as far as deaths, suffering, and economical damages are concerned, than other natural hazards (earthquakes, volcanoes, etc.). Apart from destructive direct effects, extreme hydrological events have often been followed by secondary, indirect calamities - famine, epidemics, fire. Despite the progress in science and technology, humans are still vulnerable to extreme hydrological events. The losses increase due to the continuing development of costly infrastructure, rise in population density, and decrease of the buffering capacities (deforestation, urbanization, draining wetlands, etc.). Despite heavy expenditures on both, structural and non-structural measures of flood and drought control, extreme hydrological events continue to present a hazard in developed and developing parts of the world...