Floods are still a significant threat to people, despite of the considerable developments in forecasting, management, defensive, and rescue works. In the near future, climate and societal changes as both urbanization of flood prone areas and individual dangerous behaviors could increase flood fatalities. This paper analyzes flood mortality in eight countries using a 39-year database (1980–2018) named EUFF (EUropean Flood Fatalities), which was built using documentary sources. The narratives of fatalities were investigated and standardized in the database reporting the details of the events. The entire dataset shows a stable trend on flood fatalities, despite the existence of individual increasing (Greece, Italy, and South France) and decreasing (Turkey and Catalonia) trends. The 2466 fatalities were mainly males, aged between 30–49 years and the majority of them happened outdoor. Most often people were dragged by water/mud when travelling by motor vehicles. Some cases of hazardous behaviors, such as fording rivers, were also detected. The primary cause of death was drowning, followed by heart attack. This work contributes to understand the human–flood interaction that caused fatalities. The changes in society’s vulnerability highlighted throughout this study contribute to manage future risks, to improve people protection actions, and to reduce risk behaviors.

Recent events in Western Attica in Greece (24 deaths in November 2017), in the Balearic Islands (13 deaths in October 2018), and in southern France (15 deaths in October 2018) show that flood-related mortality remains a major concern in Mediterranean countries facing flash floods. Over the past several years, many initiatives have arisen to create databases on flood-related mortality. An international initiative started in 2011 pooling regional and national databases on flood mortality from region and/or countries bordering the Mediterranean Sea. The MEditerranean Flood Fatality Database (MEFF DB) brings together, in 2018, six Mediterranean regions/countries: Catalonia (Spain), Balearic Islands (Spain), Southern France, Calabria (Italy), Greece, and Turkey, and covers the period 1980–2018. MEFF DB is on progress and, every year, new data are included, but for this study, we kept only the preliminary data that were geolocated and validated on 31st of December 2018. This research introduces a new step in the analysis of flood-related mortality and follows the statistical description of the MEFF DB already published. The goals of this paper are to draw the spatial distribution of flood mortality through a geographical information system (GIS) at different spatial scales: country, NUTS 3 (Nomenclature of Territorial Units for Statistics. Level 3) regions, catchment areas, and grid. A fatality rate (F: number of deaths/year/million of inhabitants) is created to help this analysis. Then, we try to relate mortality to basic (human or physical) drivers such as population density, rainfall seasonality, or rainfall frequency across the Mediterranean Basin. The mapping of F shows a negative mortality gradient between the western and the eastern parts of the Mediterranean Sea. The south of France appears to be the most affected region. The maps also highlight the seasonality of flood-related deaths with the same west–east gradient. It confirms that flood mortality follows the climatological seasonal patterns across the Mediterranean Basin. Flood-related fatalities mainly occur during the early fall season in the western part of the Mediterranean area, while the Easter Basin is affected later, in November or during the winter season. Eastern Turkey introduces another pattern, as mortality is more severe in summer. Mortality maps are then compared with factors that potentially contribute to the occurrence of flood fatalities, such as precipitation intensity (rainfall hazard), to explain geographical differences in the fatality rate. The density of a fatal event is correlated to the population density and the rainfall frequency. Conversely, the average number of deaths per event depends on other factors such as prevention or crisis management.

Ce document a été généré automatiquement le 3 février 2021. EchoGéo est mis à disposition selon les termes de la licence Creative Commons Attribution-Pas d'Utilisation Commerciale-Pas de Modification 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-ND) Mortalité et cyclones en Guadeloupe (Antilles françaises)

Abstract. Despite the current developments in flood forecasting and emergency management, floods still consist a significant threat to people and properties. At a national level in Europe, data on flood fatalities are fragmentary and they are mainly focused on death toll, without providing further details regarding victims' characteristics or the circumstances under which the deadly events have taken place. However, such details could enlighten us on what happened wrong when there was a victim due to a flood, and what measures should be taken in order to avoid similar events in the future. This paper presents the EUFF 2020 database (EUropean Flood Fatalities-FF) (EUropean Flood Fatalities-FF) (https://doi.org/10.4121/uuid:489d8a13-1075-4d2f-accb-db7790e4542f, Petrucci et al., 2020) which collects data from 2483 flood deadly cases occurred in a 39-year period (1980–2018) in 8 countries and 9 (two belong in Spain) study areas (Czech Republic, Israel, Italy, Turkey, Greece, Portugal, South France, Catalonia and Balearic Islands). EUFF 2020 (Petrucci et al., 2020) attempts to shed light on fatal flood events in the Euro-Mediterranean region under various geomorphological and climatic settings. The paper presents both regional and super-regional analyses from gender, age, conditions, activity of fatalities and dynamics of the accidents point of view aiming to contribute to a better understanding of the population exposure to floods phenomena. The historical research, which was carried out by using local documentary sources, highlights that 64.8 % of FF have been due to flood events in which less than 10 people were killed. Due to this relatively small number of losses, these events have not been recorded in the international disaster databases. Flood events causing single and multiple fatalities occurred throughout the period of our analysis without showing any particular remarkable trend. Data confirm that victim’s gender only, is not a de facto driver of social vulnerability. In addition, females flood fatalities are quantitatively more than males. Males' vulnerability depends on a stronger exposure to floods, due to the higher proportion of males driving vehicles, doing outdoorsworking activities and sometimes undertaking risky actions. The majority of fatalities are people in their most productive working age (between 30 and 64 years old), who are exposed to floods outdoor while heading from home to work or vice-versa. Elderly people (in status of retirement) seem to be more frequently affected while being indoor, trapped by the flood in their premises, while adults and children are dragged outdoors. Driving car or any other kind of vehicles are the most frequent conditions of victims in all studied areas, for both males and females, as widely stated in literature. The EUFF 2020 database can be extended spatially and temporally, and it represents a European database of high scientific and practical potential for further use in various scientific disciplines. We hope, EUFF 2020 database will further motivate researchers to enrich with even more data on flood fatalities from their home countries. Spatial extension will allow the comparison of local frameworks in broader European scale and the identification of useful general and local features of risk management and educational campaigns. We believe that the followed pan-European approach, frames the anticipation of flood fatality risk into a broader context, promising benefit for diverse scientific disciplines and contributing to public policies and civil protection campaigns in order to reduce the number of floods' fatalities in the future.