A retrospective analysis of the Cumbria floods in 2009 and 2015 (UK).

Event-focused analyses are a useful approach for learning from disasters. Each hazard event offers a unique occasion to collect data and gain insights into system's behavior under extreme conditions potentially revealing exceptional circumstances, unexpected failures and cascading effects, and thus a chance to broaden understanding and to improve methods and models. The Marie-Skłodowska-Curie European Training Network 'System-Risk' (www.system-risk.eu) has established a Flood Task Force that aims to learn about successful practical approaches, but also potential pitfalls and failures in the management of real flood events. This Task Force consists of an interdisciplinary team of young researchers from different backgrounds (e.g. social science, engineering, and geosciences) who conduct research projects on different aspects of large-scale flood risk systems. This multi-disciplinary setting enables taking views on flood hazard events from different angles, and thus has the potential to support the development of new approaches to understand how disasters unfold, how the risk management responds, and what the consequences are. This contribution presents the outcomes from a post-disaster review of the flood series (floods in 2009 and 2015) in the County of Cumbria (UK) with a particular focus on comparing these events and taking changes of flood risk system over time into account. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]