1939-1968 Human Adjustment to Reduce Flooding

Gilbert White authors paper titled “Human Adjustment to Reduce Flooding—1939-1968,” which advocates a new way to think about floodplain management. Rather than build structural barriers to keep water away from people, we should give water the space it needs and keep people out of harm’s way. It was in this paper that White famously opined that “Floods are acts of God, but flood losses are largely acts of man.”