Classification of floods in Europe and North America with focus on compound events

Brazda, Steven (author), Šraj, Mojca (author), Bezak, Nejc (author)

Compound events occur when multiple drivers or hazards occur in the same region or on the same time scale, hence amplifying their impacts. Compound events can cause large economic damage or endanger human lives. Thus, a better understanding of the characteristics of these events is needed in order to protect human lives. This study investigates the drivers and characteristics of floods in Europe and North America from the compound event perspective. More than 100 catchments across Europe and North America were selected as case study examples in order to investigate characteristics of floods during a 1979–2019 period. Air temperature, precipitation, snow thickness, snow liquid water equivalent, wind speed, vapour pressure, and soil moisture content were used as potential drivers. Annual maximum floods were classified into several flood types. Predefined flood types were snowmelt floods, rain-on-snow floods, short precipitation floods and long precipitation floods that were further classified into two sub-categories (i.e., wet and dry initial conditions). The results of this study show that snowmelt floods were often the dominant flood type in the selected catchments, especially at higher latitudes. Moreover, snow-related floods were slightly less frequent for high altitude catchments compared to low- and medium-elevation catchments. These high-altitude areas often experience intense summer rainstorms that generate the highest annual discharges. On the other hand, snowmelt-driven floods were the predominant flood type for the lower elevation catchments. Moreover, wet initial conditions were more frequent than the dry initial conditions, indicating the importance of the soil moisture for flood generation. Hence, these findings can be used for flood risk management and modelling.

• Language: English
• Keywords: floods, compound events, flood typologies, precipitation, catchment characteristics
• Work type: Article
• Typology: 1.01 - Original Scientific Article
• Organization: FGG - Faculty of Civil and Geodetic Engineering
• Publication status: Published
• Publication version: Version of Record
• Year: 2022
• Number of pages: 14 str.
• Numbering: Vol. 11, iss. 12, art. 580
• PID: 20.500.12556/RUL-146480
• UDC: 556.1
• ISSN on article: 2220-9964
• DOI: 10.3390/ijgi11120580
• COBISS.SI-ID: 130797315
• Publication date in RUL: 02.06.2023

Record is a part of a journal

• Title: ISPRS international journal of geo-information
• Shortened title: ISPRS int. j. geo-inf.
• Publisher: MDPI
• ISSN: 2220-9964
• COBISS.SI-ID: 18678550

Licences

• License: CC BY 4.0, Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International
• Link: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
• Description: This is the standard Creative Commons license that gives others maximum freedom to do what they want with the work as long as they credit the author.

Secondary language

• Language: Slovenian
• Keywords: poplave, sestavljeni dogodki, tipologija poplav, padavine, lastnosti porečij