Flash Flood Susceptibility Evaluation in Human-Affected Areas Using Geomorphological Methods—The Case of 9 August 2020, Euboea, Greece. A GIS-Based Approach

Abstract

Flash floods occur almost exclusively in small basins, and they are common in small Mediterranean catchments. They pose one of the most common natural disasters, as well as one of the most devastating. Such was the case of the recent flood in Euboea island, in Greece, in August 2020. A field survey was accomplished after the 2020 flash floods in order to record the main impacts of the event and identify the geomorphological and man-made causes. The flash flood susceptibility in the urbanized alluvial fans was further assessed using a Geographic Information System (GIS)-based approach. Our findings suggest that a large portion of the alluvial fans of Politika, Poros and Mantania streams are mainly characterized by high and very high hazard. In fact, ~27% of the alluvial fans of Politika and Poros streams are characterized with very high susceptibility, and ~54% of Psachna area. GIS results have been confirmed by field observations after the 2020 flash flood, with significant damages noted, such as debris flows and infrastructure damages, in buildings, bridges and the road networks. In addition, even though the adopted approach may be more time-consuming in comparison to purely computational methods, it has the potential of being more accurate as it combines field observations and the effect of past flooding events.

Flood Susceptibility in the Lower Course of the Coyuca River, Mexico: A Multi-Criteria Decision Analysis Model

“…In areas lacking this type of information, the participation of residents and decision makers is of great importance. Fieldwork through the application of interviews, questionnaires or other instruments can be of great help, describing the historical flooding of an area, identifying flooding points and other data that allow the creation of flood inventories, maps of past events, validation points of the resulting susceptibility zones [16,25,26,62,72,104].…”

Investigation Of The Beliefs And Assessment Of The Security Feeling In Primary Education In Greece In Relationship To Rapid Onset Natural Disasters.

“…During the last years, Greece has faced many rapid onset situation, such as the destructive conflagration at Mati, Attica, summer 2018 (Lekkas, 2018;Kovács, 2019;Lagouvardos et al, 2019;Efthimiou et al, 2020;Vallianou et al, 2020;Garlichs et al, 2021;Zabaniotou et al, 2021), the torren t overflows at Mandra, Attica, autumn 2017 (Andreadakis et al, 2018;Diakakis et al, 2019;Speis, 2019;Varlas et al, 2019;Diakakis et al, 2020aDiakakis et al, , 2020bKanellopoulos et al, 2020), and Politika, Psachna and Vassilika, Euboea, summer 2020Karkani et al, 2021), common cataclysmic rainfalls, the sweeping typhon in Lefkada, August 2020, the earthquake and the consequent tsunami in Samos, October 2020 Papadimitriou et al, 2020;Evelpidou et al, 2021), the great earthquake in Elassona, March, 2021 (Mavroulis et al, 2021;Lekkas et al, 2021a), the catastrophic fires in Attica and Evia in the summer of 2021 (Lekkas et al, 2021b) and many others. It is also worth mentioning that in almost all the aforementioned natural disaster cases, many human lives were mourned.…”

Environmental Fate of Trace Elements in Depositional Sediments after Flashflood Events: The Case of Mandra Town in Greece

“…Flash floods are one of the harshest natural hazards with a wide range of tangible and intangible impacts that can be both short-term and long-term [1][2][3][4][5]. In the Mediterranean region, flooding becomes an increasingly significant issue [6] as population expands to river deltas and coastal areas that are subjected to inundation mostly from small rivers [7] and ephemeral mountain torrents [8][9][10][11][12]. Furthermore, due to climate change, it is expected that extreme precipitation events and flooding will be increasing in the future [13][14][15].…”