Abstract:
Floods are among the major natural hazards in Algeria. They cause severe
casualties, damage to the building and the destruction of roads, and infrastructures.
The western Algeria is a vulnerable environment to flooding, it has experienced
devastating floods in the past which caused considerable damage such those of:
Mohammadia 1881, Mostaganem 1927 and El Asnam (Chlef) 1966. Analysis of floods
is a major tool in flood hazard assessment in the prevention system. One of the
objectives of this work is to do a detailed research on the floods which occurred in
Algeria, particularly during historical times, and their effects in terms of loss of
human life and socio-economic damage. An intensive data compilation has been
carried out for a period that dates back two centuries. This inventory represents a
step towards flood zonation and construction of an atlas of extreme floods in the
western Algeria. The catalog of floods contains all the documented events that we
have found. This work presents a method of compiling of events including historical
ones and analysis of the obtained database. As results, this work represents an
important contribution to floods risk mapping at the regional scale.
