The flood of June 2013 in Germany: how much do we know about its impacts?

Abstract

Abstract. In June 2013, widespread flooding and consequent damage and losses occurred in Central Europe, especially in Germany. This paper explores what data are available to investigate the adverse impacts of the event, what kind of information can be retrieved from these data and how well data and information fulfil requirements that were recently proposed for disaster reporting on the European and international levels. In accordance with the European Floods Directive (2007/60/EC), impacts on human health, economic activities (and assets), cultural heritage and the environment are described on the national and sub-national scale. Information from governmental reports is complemented by communications on traffic disruptions and surveys of flood-affected residents and companies.Overall, the impacts of the flood event in 2013 were manifold. The study reveals that flood-affected residents suffered from a large range of impacts, among which mental health and supply problems were perceived more seriously than financial losses. The most frequent damage type among affected companies was business interruption. This demonstrates that the current scientific focus on direct (financial) damage is insufficient to describe the overall impacts and severity of flood events.

New insights into flood warning reception and emergency response by affected parties

“…Still, three breaches of dramatic dimensions occurred: near Deggendorf at the Danube River, near Groß Rosenburg at the confluence of Saale and Elbe rivers and near Fischbeck at the Elbe River (Merz et al, 2014). The flood caused 14 fatalities, 128 people were injured, and in total 600 000 people were affected in 12 federal states in Germany (EM-Dat, 2015;Thieken et al, 2016a). Emergency response services had to provide for more than 80 000 evacuations.…”

“…However, in 2013, disaster response organizations had fewer life-threatening situations to cope with and affected people had more time for emergency measures. The overall financial loss estimates sum up to EUR 8000 million (Thieken et al, 2016a). After 2002After , floods occurred in 2005After , 2006After , 2010After and 2011 in the Danube and Elbe catchments (Kienzler et al, 2015).…”

“…Per analysis, cases with missing values were excluded. Further details on the surveys and the data processing are published by Thieken et al (2007Thieken et al ( , 2016aThieken et al ( , 2017, Kreibich et al (2007b) and Sieg et al (2017). Answers provided to questions mainly related to flood warning and emergency measures are analysed for this study.…”

“…In Germany, for instance, the extreme flood event of August 2002 caused 21 fatalities and financial losses of EUR 11 600 million (Thieken et al, 2006). In June 2013, large-scale flooding caused 14 fatalities and financial losses of around EUR 8000 million in Germany alone (Thieken et al, 2016a). The economic damage from floods has been increasing over the last decades, mostly due to increasing exposure driven by societal factors like augmented standard of living, wealth and population density (Barredo, 2009).…”

The relationship between precipitation and insurance data for floods in a Mediterranean region (northeast Spain)

“…Indeed, progress is being made on incorporating impact and vulnerability analysis in flood risk assessment, although the limitations of the impact data (availability and quality) make it difficult to carry out these studies (Elmer et al, 2010;Petrucci and Llasat, 2013;Jongman et al, 2014;Papagiannaki et al, 2015;Thieken et al, 2016;Kreibich et al, 2017).…”