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Abstract Existing needs to manage flood risk in the United States are underserved by available flood hazard information. This contributes to an alarming escalation of flood impacts amounting to hundreds of billions of dollars per year and countless disrupted lives and affected communities. Making information about flood hazards useful for the range of decisions that dictate the consequences of flooding poses many challenges. Here, we describe collaborative flood modeling, whereby researchers and end‐users at two coastal sites co‐develop fine‐resolution flood hazard models and maps responsive to decision‐making needs. We find, first of all, that resident perception and awareness of flooding are enhanced more by fine‐resolution depth contour maps than Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) flood hazard classification maps and that viewing fine‐resolution depth contour maps helps to minimize differences in flood perception across subgroups within the community, generating a shared understanding. We also find that collaborative flood modeling supports the engagement of a wide range of end‐users in contemplating the risks of flooding and provides strong evidence that the co‐produced knowledge can be readily adopted and applied for Flood Risk Management (FRM). Overall, collaborative flood modeling advances FRM by providing multiple points of entry for diverse groups of end‐users to contemplate the spatial extent, intensity, timing, chance, and consequences of flooding, thus enabling the web of decision‐making related to flooding to be better informed with the best available science. This transdisciplinary approach emphasizes vulnerability reduction and is complementary to FEMA Flood Insurance Rate Maps used for flood insurance administration.

Abstract The Urban Water Atlas for Europe constitutes an original overview of Urban Water Management in Europe, explaining and illustrating water in an unprecedented way and reflecting how water, the essence of life, flows through the arteries of our cities. Leading experts in water sciences and technologies, together with climate change researchers, have joined artists and children in order to show how thirsty our cities really are and how we can cope with their growing demand for the most precious resource of our planet. The result is the first major publication of the Science and Knowledge Service of the European Commission, the JRC, which within a movement stemming from its Sci-Art Programme seeks to explore the important opportunities arising from the cross-fertilisation between science and art. The Atlas itself establishes the benchmark for over 40 cities, both European and from farther afield, in 30 different countries, in a manner which permits a vast range of municipalities to confront one of the greatest global challenges by employing local solutions in order to ensure a supply of water for all. It contains 95 scientific indicators and parameters, over 700 graphs, original illustrations and never seen before photographs and combines the work of 40 contributors from 22 organisations. Yet, the true value of this publication lies in the process of ensuring that the underlying scientific knowledge is available for societal uptake. The resolving of conflicts which stem from an exclusive self-understanding of traditional natural sciences, the difficulty to communicate the purpose of technological solutions and the challenge to engage in peer-to-peer discussion between the sciences, politics and the citizen constitute worthy lessons for both environmental experts and their social science counterparts.