Do we prioritize floodplains for development and farming? Mapping global dependence and exposure to inundation

Dryden, Rachel; Anand, M.; Lehner, Bernhard; Fluet‐Chouinard, Etienne

doi:10.1016/j.gloenvcha.2021.102370

Cited by 16 publications

(9 citation statements)

References 45 publications

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“…In Fig. S4 (supplement), countries have been sized based on their mean standard of protection extracted from the FLOPROS global flood defense database 47 , which reveals that some of these countries that have larger populations on frequently flooded floodplains and also have high standards of protection. In Europe, 22 countries (58%) have a mean standard of protection of at least a 50-year return period, while 10 countries (26%) have very high standards of protection of at least a 100-year return period (Austria, Belgium, Germany, United Kingdom, Croatia, Hungary, Ireland, Netherlands, Poland, Portugal, Romania, and Slovakia).…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…This will have overestimated exposure in countries with extensive flood protection. However, existing flood defence databases, e.g., FLOPROS 47 are, at best, informative at the national scale, as they do not make distinctions for different floodplain types and can only provide data to be superimposed onto global flood hazard maps 94 . Improving these databases to include data on defences in places where we currently have little knowledge, e.g., Asia, is crucial as this is likely to be the greatest uncertainty in global flood exposure estimates.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Flood hazard potential reveals global floodplain settlement patterns

et al. 2023

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Flooding is one of the most common natural hazards, causing disastrous impacts worldwide. Stress-testing the global human-Earth system to understand the sensitivity of floodplains and population exposure to a range of plausible conditions is one strategy to identify where future changes to flooding or exposure might be most critical. This study presents a global analysis of the sensitivity of inundated areas and population exposure to varying flood event magnitudes globally for 1.2 million river reaches. Here we show that topography and drainage areas correlate with flood sensitivities as well as with societal behaviour. We find clear settlement patterns in which floodplains most sensitive to frequent, low magnitude events, reveal evenly distributed exposure across hazard zones, suggesting that people have adapted to this risk. In contrast, floodplains most sensitive to extreme magnitude events have a tendency for populations to be most densely settled in these rarely flooded zones, being in significant danger from potentially increasing hazard magnitudes given climate change.

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Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Flood hazard potential reveals global floodplain settlement patterns

et al. 2023

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“…Global trends of the annual urban area. Artificial impervious area is a critical indicator of impervious surfaces associated with urbanization and human settlements within river basins [42][43][44] . As such, in the following, we assume that artificial impervious area can be considered a proxy of the urban area.…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Deciphering human influence on annual maximum flood extent at the global level

Mazzoleni

Dottori

Cloke

et al. 2022

Commun Earth Environ

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Human actions are increasingly altering most river basins worldwide, resulting in changes in hydrological processes and extreme events. Yet, global patterns of changes between seasonal surface water and urbanization remain largely unknown. Here we perform a worldwide analysis of 106 large river basins and uncover global trends of annual maximum flood extent and artificial impervious area, as proxy of urbanization, over the past three decades. We explore their relationships with hydroclimatic variability, expressed as rainfall and snowmelt, and find that hydroclimatic variability alone cannot explain changes in annual maximum flood extent in 75% of the analyzed major river basins worldwide. Considering rainfall and urban area together can explain changes in the annual maximum flood extent in 57% of the basins. Our study emphasizes the importance of understanding the global impacts of human presence on changes in seasonal water dynamics.

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“…However, this data is based on observations from 1993-2004, and unlikely to fully cover extreme flood events with high return periods (i.e., flash floods) may not be observed [56].…”

Section: M E T H O D Smentioning

confidence: 99%

Human settlement pressure drives slow-moving landslide exposure

Ferrer,

Mohor,

Dewitte

et al. 2024

Preprint

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The rapidly growing population in many mountain regions is pressuring expansion onto steeper slopes, increasingly exposing people and their assets to slow-moving landslides [1, 2, 3, 4]. These moving hillslopes can inflict damage to buildings and infrastructure [5, 6], accelerate with urban alterations [7, 8], and catastrophically fail with climatic and weather extremes [9,10,11]. Cities in mountains especially face growing pressure from rising and migrating populations [12] seeking out economic opportunity [13,14]. Yet, systematic estimates of this exposure have been elusive [15,16]. Here, we identify from a new global database of 7,764 slow-moving landslides those that sustain human settlements to estimate their exposure across nine di↵erent IPCC mountain-risk regions [1]. Across most of these regions, we find that exposure to slow-moving landslides increases with sprawling urbanized areas, though clearly not with steeper terrain. We show regional contrasts in how exposure to floods may drive people to settle on moving hillslopes. East Asia stands out in how slowmoving landslide exposure increases in more urbanized basins with gentler slopes and less flood exposure. Our findings reveal how disparate knowledge creates uncertainty that undermines an assessment of the drivers of landslide exposure in regions facing increasing mountain risks, such as Central Asia, Northeast Africa, and the Tibetan Plateau.

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Do we prioritize floodplains for development and farming? Mapping global dependence and exposure to inundation

Cited by 16 publications

References 45 publications

Flood hazard potential reveals global floodplain settlement patterns

Flood hazard potential reveals global floodplain settlement patterns

Deciphering human influence on annual maximum flood extent at the global level

Human settlement pressure drives slow-moving landslide exposure

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