Abstract. The German research programme RIsk MAnagment of eXtreme flood events has accomplished the improvement of regional hazard assessment for the large rivers in Germany. Here we focused on the Elbe river at its gauge Dresden, which belongs to the oldest gauges in Europe with officially available daily discharge time series beginning on 1 January 1890. The project on the one hand aimed to extend and to revise the existing time series, and on the other hand to examine the variability of the Elbe river discharge conditions on a greater time scale. Therefore one major task were the historical searches and the examination of the retrieved documents and the contained information. After analysing this information the development of the river course and the discharge conditions were discussed. Using the provided knowledge, in an other subproject, a historical hydraulic model was established. Its results then again were used here. A further purpose was the determining of flood frequency based on all pre-processed data. The obtained knowledge about historical changes was also used to get an idea about possible future variations under climate change conditions. Especially variations in the runoff characteristic of the Elbe river over the course of the year were analysed. It succeeded to obtain a much longer discharge time series which contain fewer errors and uncertainties. Hence an optimized regional hazard assessment was realised.