In recent decades, there has been a significant increase in economic losses caused by flood events on the coastal region of south-eastern Spain. The increase of extreme rainfall events forecast by the climate change models is currently not reflected in the statistics which suggests that the principal cause is due to the exposure experienced within the past 40 years. Consequently, it is interesting to evaluate the effect of urban growth in flood-prone areas and the role played by government institutions in mitigating the increase in exposure. For this study, the cadastral information and the hydrological modelling data for the return periods of 10, 50, 100 and 500 years were used. This allows high-resolution spatial-temporal results to be obtained that show one of the most significant growths in exposure in Spain and Europe, as well as the low efficiency that risk mitigation measures have had.

The Spanish Mediterranean river basin provides a good background for studying floods from documentary and bibliographical sources within the specialty of historical climatology. This study region's long history of human occupation and climatic conditions together determine a high risk of flooding. As a result, there exists an enormous amount of documentary heritage containing flood information. However, the heterogeneity of documentary sources and different approaches to classifying floods through historical documents can generate some biases and uncertainties about the quantity and quality of the available data. For this reason, this paper proposes a methodology for reconstructing historical floods based on cross-referencing documentary sources. This approach, together with additional archival work, has allowed us to increase the number of flood series for the Spanish Mediterranean coast by 17% and has generated a surprising increase of 233% in the number of flood cases detected. The data obtained have allowed us to analyze the variability of floods and their relationship with climatic and social factors from the fourteenth century to the present. Different climatic oscillations related to the Little Ice Age are detected between the 14th and 19th centuries. Additionally, we detected a strong influence of the defense infrastructures and urban growth, which explain the recent flood trends. However, the difficulty in analyzing the influence of social factors on long-term flood behavior invites us to reflect on the need for further work for emphasizing these issues.

Abstract. Flood databases of high spatio-temporal resolution are a necessary tool for proper spatial planning, especially in areas with high levels of exposure and danger to floods. This study presents the preliminary results of the Spanish Mediterranean Coastal Flood (SMC-Flood) database covering the municipalities in this region. This database collects information on flood cases that occurred between 1960 and 2015 by systematically consulting the digital archives of the main newspapers in the study area. The search for flood information was conducted by means of using links between municipality names and seven keywords that correspond to the most common ways of referring to a situation that is likely to describe a flood in Spain. This methodology has enabled the reconstruction of 3008 flood cases at a municipal scale with daily resolution while gathering information on the types of damage, intensity, severity and area affected. The spatio-temporal analysis of the data reveals hotspots where flood cases are especially intense and damaging when compared to highly developed areas where the frequency of flood cases is very high. This situation is especially worrying insofar as we have detected a growing trend in the frequency and area affected by flood cases. However, one positive aspect is that the intensity and severity of flood cases follows a falling trend. The main novelty lies in the fact that the high-resolution spatial analysis has made it possible to detect a clear latitudinal gradient of growing intensity and severity in a north–south direction. This pattern calls for new actions by the coastal municipal authorities of southern Spain for adaptation to a more complex flood scenario.

No abstract

En España, las inundaciones representan el peligro con origen en la naturaleza que mayores pérdidas ocasiona, tanto económicas como humanas. Entendido el riesgo como una construcción social, la evaluación de la vulnerabilidad, resulta crucial para mejorar la adaptación de la población expuesta. Entre los métodos empleados para llevar a cabo esas evaluaciones está el uso de índices. En el presente estudio empleamos una réplica del SOVI® (Social Vulnerability Index), uno de los más ampliamente utilizados a nivel mundial y cuya integración se ha puesto en práctica en un área de especial sensibilidad ante las inundaciones, el litoral mediterráneo de la Región de Murcia y la Comunidad Valenciana (España). Los resultados obtenidos evidencian una mayor vulnerabilidad social en secciones censales no inundables que en las inundables y pone de manifiesto un patrón de desigualdad social en ámbitos donde la red hidrográfica presenta un funcionamiento efímero y súbito como las ramblas.