Compound flood impact forecasting: integrating fluvial and flash flood impact assessments into a unified system

Abstract

Floods can arise from a variety of physical processes. Although numerous risk assessment approaches stress the importance of taking into account the possible combinations of flood types (i.e. compound floods), this awareness has so far not been reflected in the development of early warning systems: existing methods for forecasting flood hazards or the corresponding socio-economic impacts are generally designed for only one type of flooding. During compound flood events, these flood type-specific approaches are unable to identify overall hazards or impacts. Moreover, from the perspective of end-users (e.g. civil protection authorities), the monitoring of separate flood forecasts – with potentially contradictory outputs – can be confusing and time-consuming, and ultimately impede an effective emergency response. To enhance decision support, this paper proposes the integration of different flood type-specific approaches into one compound flood impact forecast. This possibility has been explored through the development of a unified system combining the simulations of two impact forecasting methods: the Rapid Risk Assessment of the European Flood Awareness System (EFAS RRA; representing fluvial floods) and the radar-based ReAFFIRM method (representing flash floods). The unified system has been tested for a recent catastrophic episode of compound flooding: the DANA event of September 2019 in south-east Spain (Depresión Aislada en Niveles Altos, meaning cut-off low). The combination of the two methods identified well the overall compound flood extents and impacts reported by various information sources. For instance, the simulated economic losses amounted to about EUR 670 million against EUR 425 million of reported insured losses. Although the compound impact estimates were less accurate at municipal level, they corresponded much better to the observed impacts than those generated by the two methods applied separately. This demonstrates the potential of such integrated approaches for improving decision support services.