Changes of flood risk within the catchment of river Elbe

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    Heidi Kreibich

Changes of flood risk within the catchment of river Elbe

Picture FloodFor decades, flood damages have been increasing. Nonetheless, it is still unclear which factor has the highest influence on this trend. The project “Changes of flood risk within the catchment of river Elbe” assesses changes of the vulnerability and the risk of flood damages to residential buildings between 1990 and 2020. Methodical approaches and results of the previous CEDIM project “Flood risk in a changing climate” will be used. However, the spatial coverage will be extended from sub-catchments in the federal state of Saxony to the German part of the Elbe catchment.
The modeling encompasses the assessment of inundation areas and depths as well as of the recurrence intervals in the light of climate change (SWIM model) and the estimation of the resultant damages to residential buildings considering the growth of property values or land use change (FLEMOps model). Sensitivity analyses will be conducted to assess the influence of each of these three components (property values, climate and land use changes) on risk estimates. For each component, a comparison of modeling approaches and scenarios allows to determine model uncertainties and to determine which component has the biggest impact. Image: Flood along the river Elbe in 2006, source: GFZ, Uli Herrmann

Publications

Elmer, F., Hoymann, J., Düthmann, D., Vorogushyn, S., Kreibich, H.   Drivers of flood risk change in residential areas.   Nat. Hazards Earth Syst. Sci., 12, 1641-1657, 2012, doi: 10.5194/nhess-12-1641-2012