Scientific structure of the research unit and key research questions
Extreme floods are extraordinary in terms of their size, characterised by their peaks, and/or other features, such as volumes, shapes, spatial extent or seasonality which are, in turn, related to the peaks. Floods occur during events, i.e. defined periods of high river discharges. The natural way of analysing floods, therefore, is the event scale. Flood events are imbedded in a regional context of meteorological, landscape and river conditions, so a complementary way of analysing floods are space (regional) scales.

In the first funding phase, the reseauch unit analysed extreme flood processes along the axes of scales:

• (I) event scale processes
• (II) spatial (regional) scale variability
• (III) temporal (decadal) scale variability
• (IV) uncertainty and predictability

As an extension of the first funding phase, the second phase relies on Task Forces that concentrate on the joint methodological research on a given topic. The six Task Forces are