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| Wed, 4th Aug 2021 13:16:00 |
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Floods: Research shows millions more at risk of flooding |
A new study shows that the percentage of the global population at risk from flooding has risen by almost a quarter since the year 2000.
Satellite images were used to document the rise, which is far greater than had been predicted by computer models.
The analysis shows that migration and a growing number of flood events are behind the rapid increase.
By 2030, millions more will experience increased flooding due to climate and demographic change, the authors say.
Flooding is the environmental disaster that impacts more people than any other, say researchers.
That view has echoed around the world in recent weeks, with huge inundations destroying lives and property.
In Germany and China, record downpours overwhelmed defences, amid arguments about levels of preparation.
One of the challenges with flooding, according to researchers, is that most maps of where the waters will likely penetrate are based on models.
These simulate floods based on information such as elevation, rainfall and data from ground sensors.
But they have significant limitations: they fail to consider population or infrastructure changes and are unable to predict random events such as dam breaches.
So when Hurricane Harvey hit Texas in 2017, around 80,000 homes were flooded that were not on government risk maps.
In this new study, researchers looked at daily satellite imagery to estimate both the extent of flooding and the number of people exposed to over 900 large flood events between 2000 and 2018.
They found that between 255 and 290 million people were directly affected - and between 2000 and 2015, the number of people living in these flooded locations increased by 58-86 million.
This represents an increase of 20-24% in the proportion of the world population exposed to floods, some 10 times higher than previous estimates.
The increase was not evenly spread throughout the world. Countries with increased flood exposure were mainly in Asia and sub-Saharan Africa.
In European and North American nations, the risk was stable or decreasing.
Around 90% of the flood events observed by the scientists were in South and Southeast Asia, around the basins of major rivers including the Indus, Ganges-Brahmaputra and the Mekong.
"We were able to capture a lot of floods in Southeast Asia more than other places, because they're so slow-moving and so the clouds move, and we're able to get a really clear image of the flood," explained lead author Dr Beth Tellman from the University of Arizona and chief science officer at Cloud to Street, a global flood-tracking platform.
"But there was also just a lot of flooding, really high impactful flooding in southern Asia and Southeast Asia. There's also a large human population that settled near rivers for really important reasons [such as] agriculture," Dr Tellman explained. But she added that this "also, unfortunately exposes people to a lot of flooding events".
Read original full article
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