In many Caribbean countries a lack of established good practice methods means that engineers and planners are often unable to plan for and mitigate floods effectively. In most Caribbean states rainfall intensity–duration–frequency (IDF) curves are not readily available. This is a result of the limited quantity of short‐duration rainfall data available and also because the few IDF curves that have been developed in the region are generally not in the public domain. The lack of readily available IDF curves in the region often results in engineers responsible for the design of key infrastructure inappropriately ‘transferring’ IDF curves developed for islands, where rainfall is less intense, for use in their designs. There are no countries in the Caribbean with nationally consistent flood hazard maps. This often leaves spatial and emergency planners with insufficient information to make important strategic decisions. This paper details the challenges that were faced in producing rainfall IDF curves for return periods up to 1 in 50 years and nationally consistent extreme fluvial flood extent maps with limited data for selected countries within the Caribbean. Recommendations are made for the future development of rainfall IDF curves and national flood maps in the region both in terms of data and organisational requirements.
Duration is a key characteristic of floods influencing the design of protection infrastructures for prevention, deployment of rescue resources during the emergency, and repartition of damage costs in the aftermath. The latter financial aspect mainly relies on the insurance industry and allows the transfer of damage costs from the public sector to the private capital market. In this context, the cost of catastrophes affecting a large amount of insured properties is partly or totally transferred from insurance companies to reinsurance companies by contracts that define the portion of transferred costs according to the temporal extent of the flood events synthesized in the so-called hours clause. However, hours clauses imply standard flood event durations, such as 168 h (1 week), regardless of the hydrological properties characterizing different areas. In this study, we firstly perform a synoptic-scale exploratory analysis to investigate the duration and magnitude of large flood events that occurred around the world and in Europe between 1985 and 2016, and then we present a data-driven procedure devised to compute flood duration by tracking flood peaks along a river network. The exploratory analysis highlights the link of flood duration and magnitude with flood generation mechanism, thus allowing the identification of regions that are more or less prone to long-lasting events exceeding the standard hours clauses. The flood tracking procedure is applied to seven of the largest river basins in Central and Eastern Europe (Danube, Rhine, Elbe, Weser, Rhone, Loire, and Garonne). It correctly identifies major flood events and enables the definition of the probability distribution of the flood propagation time and its sampling uncertainty. Overall, we provide information and Disclaimer: Any views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the scientific view or position of AIR Worldwide.
No abstract
The area under investigation, Lower Saxony (Northwest Germany), is a former malaria region with highest incidences along the coastal zones. Malaria had finally become extinct in the early 1950s. Subsequently, further scientific investigations in that field declined. Nevertheless, the vector in shape of Anopheles mosquitoes has still been present in Lower Saxony. Thus, the question arises, whether a new autochthon transmission could take place if the pathogen is introduced again and could develop in Anopheles mosquitoes. Answering this question was the first aim of the investigation at hand. The second one was to examine the spatial and temporal structure of potential transmissions in respect to the predicted increase of air temperatures according to the IPCC scenarios. To answer these questions, current information about Anophelinae and their distribution and habitat preferences within Germany were collected by literature research as well as temperature measurements and Anopheles findings were compiled from the German Weather Survey and the Niedersächsisches Landesamt für Okologie (NLO), respectively. The results reveal a climate warming between the 30-years period from 1961 to 1990 and the years between 1985 and 2004. Induced by higher monthly mean temperatures, the risk of a malaria tertiana transmission is consequently increasing for Lower Saxony as temperature is the determining variable of the mathematical model. The study could demonstrate that most parts of the country are located within a 2 months lasting transmission zone. Although Germany is not an endemic malaria zone, the pathogen can enter the country most likely by infected people or imported mosquitoes that transport it in their guts.
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