Methodology for risk assessment of flash flood events due to climate and land-use changes: application to the Llobregat basin

Global change, including climate, land-use and socio-economic changes, is expected to increase the stress on the entire water cycle. In the Mediterranean region, extreme events are likely to increase due to climate change. This work, framed in the EC Seventh Framework Programme project IMPRINTS, presents a methodology to obtain future flood risk maps using climate and land-use scenarios, identifying the new potential risk zones. The implementation of this methodology is applied to the Llobregat river basin case study. Two different special report on emission scenarios are used, and although the uncertainties are high, the results obtained are coincident: an increase of flood risk is observed in the whole Low Llobregat area. The climate changes affect the basin globally, increasing the risk homogeneously within the area considered. On the other hand, land-use changes represent urban growth in the floodplains, and hence, local risk increases are found in these spots.

VELASCO Marc;  CABELLO Angels;  ESCALER Isabel;  BARREDO CANO Jose Ignacio;  BARRERA-ESCODA A.; 

2014-06-13

IWA PUBLISHING

JRC90489

2040-2244,   

http://www.iwaponline.com/jwc/005/jwc0050204.htm,    https://publications.jrc.ec.europa.eu/repository/handle/JRC90489,   

10.2166/wcc.2014.027,