Process-based flood risk assessment for Germany

Abstract

<p>Floods affect people worldwide and account for more than USD 100 billion losses on average every year. Hazard, Exposure and Vulnerability are the three components that influence flood risk. Flood Risk Management (FRM) decisions especially, with respect to new flood defense schemes and resilience initiatives are generally taken based on the assessment of impacts for hazard scenarios. Current large-scale studies are comprehensive in terms of sectors covered in impact assessment. However, these studies often deploy generalized data and methods on the model components resulting in coarse risk estimates with low spatial resolution.</p><p>In this study, we use process-based models with 100m resolution on the national scale within a systems approach to develop and simulate a 5000 year flood event catalogue for Germany. The events are then analyzed per economic sector, including residential, commercial and agriculture sectors. The risk chain includes continuous simulation of high-resolution hazard maps, obtained from coupled hydrology and hydraulic models; NUTS3-level exposure asset values further disaggregated to ATKIS land-use data and calibrated object-level vulnerability models that provide high-resolution quantification of economic damage. Spatial dependence of flood events is addressed by the continuous simulation approach. For each model component in the risk assessment (hazard, exposure and vulnerability), uncertainty in data and methods are integrated into the risk predictions. Based on these simulations, we present a sector-wise flood risk assessment for Germany along with the reliability of the risk estimates. This process-based, systemic flood risk assessment is valuable for policy making, adaptation planning and estimating insurance premiums.</p>

Perspective-taking with affected others to promote climate change mitigation

“…In the case of climate change, adverse consequences have to be endured mostly by people who are somehow "distant" from those with the greatest mitigation leverage: while the largest share of greenhouse gas emissions stems from operations in the Global North (Hickel, 2020), the most severe consequences of climate change are felt by people living in the Global South (Mendelsohn et al, 2006;IPCC, 2018). For instance, although flood risk is also increasing in Germany due to climate change (Te Linde et al, 2011;Sairam et al, 2021), the greatest risk is predicted for Southeast Asia, India, eastern Africa as well as parts of the Andean region (Hirabayashi et al, 2013;Rentschler et al, 2022). Thus, mitigating climate pressure from people most affected by climate change will require an enormous collective behavioral change from people who are distant from them in terms of residence and cultural background.…”

Process‐Based Flood Risk Assessment for Germany

“…Sources of data and model components are referenced in the manuscript and Supporting Information S1. The data pertaining to risk curves can be accessed from the GFZ data repository (Sairam et al., 2021, https://doi.org/10.5880/GFZ.4.4.2021.003).…”

Tinjauan Ancaman Wabah dan Penyakit Akibat Perubahan Iklim

“…Misalnya banjir di utara Eropa dan China beberapa waktu lalu yang hampir bersamaan dengan kebakaran di beberapa wilayah di selatan Eropa. Sejumlah penelitian sesungguhnya pernah meramalkan hal ini sebagai resiko yang akan terjadi sebagai dampak perubahan iklim (Alfieri et al, 2015;Ertugrul et al, 2021;Gu et al, 2020;Reaños, 2021;Sairam et al, 2021). Meskipun demikian ada dampak lain yang mungkin belum kita sadari seutuhnya khususnya di bidang kesehatan.…”