Historical torrential flood events in the Kolubara river basin

Abstract

According to the number of torrential watercourses, the frequency of occurrence and the consequences that have resulted in the past, torrential floods are the most frequent and disastrous natural hazards in Serbia. Since they are always followed by severe material damages and often casualties, the character of torrential flood events seems to be a real challenge in natural risk management in our country. In this paper, phenomenon of torrential floods in Kolubara river basin is presented through temporal and spatial characterization of registered torrential flood events. The dataset of 121 recorded torrential flood events in the Kolubara river basin for the period from 1929 to 2010 is derived from the Inventory of torrential floods in Serbia for the period of 99 years, 1915–2013 (with 848 torrential flood events and over 133 casualties). The main focus is on the frequency of occurrence of registered torrential flood events. Within a year, there is a primary peak in May and June and secondary peak in March; this finding corresponds greatly to the monthly distribution of all registered events on the Inventory level. Frequency of torrential floods occurrence within a researched period shows a significant increment, the number of registered events is more than doubled comparing the latest period (1991–2010) with the first one (1929–1960), while the in-between period (1961–1990) already indicates that increase. These results can be used for improving the system of preventive and mitigation measures in order to reduce the torrential flood consequences to an acceptable level.