Proceedings of an expert workshop organised and hosted by the European Commission, Directorate-General for Research - Environment and Climate System Unit, on 10 October 2005 in Brussels. Coordinators of key FP5 and FP6 research projects dealing with different aspects of flood risk management discussed the concerns generated by the floods in Europe during summer 2005 and previous years. The workshop proceedings comprise abstracts of the contributions to sessions dealing with Flood Forecasting Systems and Earth Observation Issues, Extreme Flood Processes and Uncertainty, Flood Forecasting Technology, Integrated Flood Risk Management, as well as summaries of the final discussion on FP7 flood research needs.