Publications

This publication is the outcome from the mid-term conference held in Munich on 24 – 25 September 2008.

Proceedings of the workshop held on 24 September 2008 in Pisa, Italy.

Brain Damage and Repair aims to attract the interest of neuroscientists and clinical neurologists by building a novel bridge from molecular research to clinical therapy. This novel approach reveals the functional features of neurons and glia un the particular context of vulnerability and self-protection, intracellular properties and extracellular matrix. Arising from this platform, this volume unfolds the molecular and systemic processes underlying migration disorders, axonal injury, repair and regeneration. Comprehensive chapters on neurological diseases, such as M. Alzheimer, M. Parkinson, ALS, stroke or trauma, take this knowledge; apply it at clinical level to provide a basis for novel therapeutic strategies. Brain Damage and Repair is completed with chapters on imaging techniques, viral gene transfer or legal international handling of stem cell transfer and patents of DNA/proteins.

Flood frequency analysis is used for establishing a relationship between flood magnitude and frequency of occurrence (return period) and for estimating the design-flood at a given

location of interest. The approach can be implemented locally (At-Site Flood Frequency

Analysis, SFFA); or regionally (Regional Flood Frequency Analysis, RFFA), which is used to limit unreliable extrapolation when available data record lengths are short as compared to the recurrence interval of interest, or for predicting the flooding potential at locations where no observed data are available. Both SFFA and RFFA are mature disciplines and consolidated methodologies are available for many European regions. As a result, different European countries, and sometimes even different regions within a country, have adopted different methodologies, which are often selected on the basis of traditional approaches or restricted due to limitation of available data.

The main objective of the COST Action ES0901 European procedure for flood frequency

estimation (FloodFreq, http://www.cost-floodfreq.eu/), which started in 2010, is to undertake a pan-European comparison and evaluation of methods for flood frequency estimation under the various climatologic and geographic conditions found in Europe, and different levels of data availability, as required by European Flood Directive (2007/60/EC). In particular, Working Group 2 (WG2) is focusing on an assessment of statistical methods for flood frequency estimation. In the first phase of WG2, state-of-the-art methods were collected from all member countries of the WGs, and presented in a report form.

In this report, the description of applied frequency analysis methods is presented. The report also include a catalogue of flood data availability/unavailability across Europe together with relevant information (e.g., catchment descriptors, climatological [see above] and hydrological characteristics, indications on frequency distribution recommended for use in flood frequency studies) are collected and presented. Finally, this report presents some preliminary outcomes of analyses that aim to identify in an L moment-based framework the most suitable parent distributions for representing the frequency regime of annual maximum flood across Europe.