Drivers of future fluvial flood risk change for residential buildings in Europe

Flooding is the most costly natural hazard in Europe. Climatic and socioeconomic change are expected to further increase the amount of loss in the future. In this study, we estimate fluvial flood losses for residential buildings in Europe combining flood hazard and exposure projections with attributes of flood vulnerability (flood protection standards and private precaution measures), all derived from open data sources. The independent and combined influence of each risk driver are evaluated for three future periods centered around 2025, 2055 and 2085, using the probabilistic flood loss model BN-FLEMOps. The results reveal that urban centers and their surrounding regions are the hotspots of flood risk in Europe. Flood risk is projected to increase in the British Isles and Central Europe throughout the 21st century, while risk in many regions of Scandinavia and the Mediterranean will stagnate or decline. Under the combined effects of exposure change and climate scenarios, fluvial flood risk in Europe is estimated to increase seven-fold and ten-fold respectively until the end of the century. Our results confirm the dominance of socioeconomic change over climate change on increasing risk. Improved private precautionary measures would reduce flood risk on average by 15%. This large-scale comprehensive assessment at a regional level resolution is valuable for multi-scale risk-based adaptation planning.

STEINHAUSEN Max;  PAPROTNY Dominik;  DOTTORI Francesco;  SAIRAM Nivedita;  MENTASCHI Lorenzo;  ALFIERI Lorenzo;  LÜDTKE Stefan;  KREIBICH Heidi;  SCHRÖTER Kai; 

2022-08-22

ELSEVIER SCI LTD

JRC124751

0959-3780 (online),   

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0959378022000978,    https://publications.jrc.ec.europa.eu/repository/handle/JRC124751,   

10.1016/j.gloenvcha.2022.102559 (online),