Hydrology and Earth System Sciences (Sep 2024)

Merging modelled and reported flood impacts in Europe in a combined flood event catalogue for 1950–2020

  • D. Paprotny,
  • B. Rhein,
  • B. Rhein,
  • M. I. Vousdoukas,
  • P. Terefenko,
  • F. Dottori,
  • F. Dottori,
  • S. Treu,
  • J. Śledziowski,
  • L. Feyen,
  • H. Kreibich

DOI
https://doi.org/10.5194/hess-28-3983-2024
Journal volume & issue
Vol. 28
pp. 3983 – 4010

Abstract

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Long-term trends in flood losses are regulated by multiple factors including climate variation, demographic dynamics, economic growth, land-use transitions, reservoir construction and flood risk reduction measures. The attribution of those drivers through the use of counterfactual scenarios of hazard, exposure or vulnerability first requires a good representation of historical events, including their location, their intensity and the factual circumstances in which they occurred. Here, we develop a chain of models that is capable of recreating riverine, coastal and compound floods in Europe between 1950 and 2020 that had a potential to cause significant socioeconomic impacts. This factual catalogue of almost 15 000 such events was scrutinized with historical records of flood impacts. We found that at least 10 % of them led to significant socioeconomic impacts (including fatalities) according to available sources. The model chain was able to capture events responsible for 96 % of known impacts contained in the Historical Analysis of Natural Hazards in Europe (HANZE) flood impact database in terms of persons affected and economic losses and for 81 % of fatalities. The dataset enables the study of the drivers of vulnerability and flood adaptation due to a large sample of events with historical impact data. The model chain can be further used to generate counterfactual events, especially those related to climate change and human influence on catchments.