TY - JOUR A1 - Macdonald, Elena A1 - Merz, Bruno A1 - Guse, Björn A1 - Wietzke, Luzie A1 - Ullrich, Sophie A1 - Kemter, Matthias A1 - Ahrens, Bodo A1 - Vorogushyn, Sergiy T1 - Event and catchment controls of heavy tail behavior of floods JF - Water resources research N2 - In some catchments, the distribution of annual maximum streamflow shows heavy tail behavior, meaning the occurrence probability of extreme events is higher than if the upper tail decayed exponentially. Neglecting heavy tail behavior can lead to an underestimation of the likelihood of extreme floods and the associated risk. Partly contradictory results regarding the controls of heavy tail behavior exist in the literature and the knowledge is still very dispersed and limited. To better understand the drivers, we analyze the upper tail behavior and its controls for 480 catchments in Germany and Austria over a period of more than 50 years. The catchments span from quickly reacting mountain catchments to large lowland catchments, allowing for general conclusions. We compile a wide range of event and catchment characteristics and investigate their association with an indicator of the tail heaviness of flood distributions, namely the shape parameter of the GEV distribution. Following univariate analyses of these characteristics, along with an evaluation of different aggregations of event characteristics, multiple linear regression models, as well as random forests, are constructed. A novel slope indicator, which represents the relation between the return period of flood peaks and event characteristics, captures the controls of heavy tails best. Variables describing the catchment response are found to dominate the heavy tail behavior, followed by event precipitation, flood seasonality, and catchment size. The pre-event moisture state in a catchment has no relevant impact on the tail heaviness even though it does influence flood magnitudes. KW - heavy tail behavior KW - floods KW - event characteristics KW - catchment KW - characteristics KW - catchment response Y1 - 2022 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1029/2021WR031260 SN - 0043-1397 SN - 1944-7973 VL - 58 IS - 6 PB - American Geophysical Union CY - Washington ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Sieg, Tobias A1 - Thieken, Annegret T1 - Improving flood impact estimations JF - Environmental research letters N2 - A reliable estimation of flood impacts enables meaningful flood risk management and rapid assessments of flood impacts shortly after a flood. The flood in 2021 in Central Europe and the analysis of its impacts revealed that these estimations are still inadequate. Therefore, we investigate the influence of different data sets and methods aiming to improve flood impact estimates. We estimated economic flood impacts to private households and companies for a flood event in 2013 in Germany using (a) two different flood maps, (b) two approaches to map exposed objects based on OpenStreetMap and the Basic European Asset Map, (c) two different approaches to estimate asset values, and (d) tree-based models and Stage-Damage-Functions to describe the vulnerability. At the macro scale, water masks lead to reasonable impact estimations. At the micro and meso-scale, the identification of affected objects by means of water masks is insufficient leading to unreliable estimations. The choice of exposure data sets is most influential on the estimations. We find that reliable impact estimations are feasible with reported numbers of flood-affected objects from the municipalities. We conclude that more effort should be put in the investigation of different exposure data sets and the estimation of asset values. Furthermore, we recommend the establishment of a reporting system in the municipalities for a fast identification of flood-affected objects shortly after an event. KW - rapid impact assessment KW - floods KW - OpenStreetMap KW - flood risk management KW - natural hazards Y1 - 2022 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1088/1748-9326/ac6d6c SN - 1748-9326 VL - 17 IS - 6 PB - IOP Publ. Ltd. CY - Bristol ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Wutzler, Bianca A1 - Hudson, Paul A1 - Thieken, Annegret T1 - Adaptation strategies of flood-damaged businesses in Germany JF - Frontiers in water N2 - Flood risk management in Germany follows an integrative approach in which both private households and businesses can make an important contribution to reducing flood damage by implementing property-level adaptation measures. While the flood adaptation behavior of private households has already been widely researched, comparatively less attention has been paid to the adaptation strategies of businesses. However, their ability to cope with flood risk plays an important role in the social and economic development of a flood-prone region. Therefore, using quantitative survey data, this study aims to identify different strategies and adaptation drivers of 557 businesses damaged by a riverine flood in 2013 and 104 businesses damaged by pluvial or flash floods between 2014 and 2017. Our results indicate that a low perceived self-efficacy may be an important factor that can reduce the motivation of businesses to adapt to flood risk. Furthermore, property-owners tended to act more proactively than tenants. In addition, high experience with previous flood events and low perceived response costs could strengthen proactive adaptation behavior. These findings should be considered in business-tailored risk communication. KW - risk management KW - climate change adaptation KW - floods KW - disaster risk KW - reduction KW - Germany KW - precaution KW - emergency management Y1 - 2022 U6 - https://doi.org/10.3389/frwa.2022.932061 SN - 2624-9375 VL - 4 PB - Frontiers Media CY - Lausanne ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Schmidt, Lennart A1 - Hesse, Falk A1 - Attinger, Sabine A1 - Kumar, Rohini T1 - Challenges in applying machine learning models for hydrological inference BT - a case study for flooding events across Germany JF - Water resources research N2 - Machine learning (ML) algorithms are being increasingly used in Earth and Environmental modeling studies owing to the ever-increasing availability of diverse data sets and computational resources as well as advancement in ML algorithms. Despite advances in their predictive accuracy, the usefulness of ML algorithms for inference remains elusive. In this study, we employ two popular ML algorithms, artificial neural networks and random forest, to analyze a large data set of flood events across Germany with the goals to analyze their predictive accuracy and their usability to provide insights to hydrologic system functioning. The results of the ML algorithms are contrasted against a parametric approach based on multiple linear regression. For analysis, we employ a model-agnostic framework named Permuted Feature Importance to derive the influence of models' predictors. This allows us to compare the results of different algorithms for the first time in the context of hydrology. Our main findings are that (1) the ML models achieve higher prediction accuracy than linear regression, (2) the results reflect basic hydrological principles, but (3) further inference is hindered by the heterogeneity of results across algorithms. Thus, we conclude that the problem of equifinality as known from classical hydrological modeling also exists for ML and severely hampers its potential for inference. To account for the observed problems, we propose that when employing ML for inference, this should be made by using multiple algorithms and multiple methods, of which the latter should be embedded in a cross-validation routine. KW - machine learning KW - inference KW - floods Y1 - 2020 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1029/2019WR025924 SN - 0043-1397 SN - 1944-7973 VL - 56 IS - 5 PB - American Geophysical Union CY - Washington ER - TY - GEN A1 - Wutzler, Bianca A1 - Hudson, Paul A1 - Thieken, Annegret T1 - Adaptation strategies of flood-damaged businesses in Germany T2 - Zweitveröffentlichungen der Universität Potsdam : Mathematisch-Naturwissenschaftliche Reihe N2 - Flood risk management in Germany follows an integrative approach in which both private households and businesses can make an important contribution to reducing flood damage by implementing property-level adaptation measures. While the flood adaptation behavior of private households has already been widely researched, comparatively less attention has been paid to the adaptation strategies of businesses. However, their ability to cope with flood risk plays an important role in the social and economic development of a flood-prone region. Therefore, using quantitative survey data, this study aims to identify different strategies and adaptation drivers of 557 businesses damaged by a riverine flood in 2013 and 104 businesses damaged by pluvial or flash floods between 2014 and 2017. Our results indicate that a low perceived self-efficacy may be an important factor that can reduce the motivation of businesses to adapt to flood risk. Furthermore, property-owners tended to act more proactively than tenants. In addition, high experience with previous flood events and low perceived response costs could strengthen proactive adaptation behavior. These findings should be considered in business-tailored risk communication. T3 - Zweitveröffentlichungen der Universität Potsdam : Mathematisch-Naturwissenschaftliche Reihe - 1304 KW - risk management KW - climate change adaptation KW - floods KW - disaster risk reduction KW - Germany KW - precaution KW - emergency management Y1 - 2023 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus4-577350 SN - 1866-8372 IS - 1304 ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Wutzler, Bianca A1 - Hudson, Paul A1 - Thieken, Annegret T1 - Adaptation strategies of flood-damaged businesses in Germany JF - Frontiers in Water N2 - Flood risk management in Germany follows an integrative approach in which both private households and businesses can make an important contribution to reducing flood damage by implementing property-level adaptation measures. While the flood adaptation behavior of private households has already been widely researched, comparatively less attention has been paid to the adaptation strategies of businesses. However, their ability to cope with flood risk plays an important role in the social and economic development of a flood-prone region. Therefore, using quantitative survey data, this study aims to identify different strategies and adaptation drivers of 557 businesses damaged by a riverine flood in 2013 and 104 businesses damaged by pluvial or flash floods between 2014 and 2017. Our results indicate that a low perceived self-efficacy may be an important factor that can reduce the motivation of businesses to adapt to flood risk. Furthermore, property-owners tended to act more proactively than tenants. In addition, high experience with previous flood events and low perceived response costs could strengthen proactive adaptation behavior. These findings should be considered in business-tailored risk communication. KW - risk management KW - climate change adaptation KW - floods KW - disaster risk reduction KW - Germany KW - precaution KW - emergency management Y1 - 2022 U6 - https://doi.org/10.3389/frwa.2022.932061 SN - 2624-9375 PB - Frontiers Media SA CY - Lausanne, Schweiz ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Bubeck, Philip A1 - Berghäuser, Lisa A1 - Hudson, Paul A1 - Thieken, Annegret T1 - Using panel data to understand the dynamics of human behavior in response to flooding JF - Risk analysis : an international journal N2 - Insights into the dynamics of human behavior in response to flooding are urgently needed for the development of effective integrated flood risk management strategies, and for integrating human behavior in flood risk modeling. However, our understanding of the dynamics of risk perceptions, attitudes, individual recovery processes, as well as adaptive (i.e., risk reducing) intention and behavior are currently limited because of the predominant use of cross-sectional surveys in the flood risk domain. Here, we present the results from one of the first panel surveys in the flood risk domain covering a relatively long period of time (i.e., four years after a damaging event), three survey waves, and a wide range of topics relevant to the role of citizens in integrated flood risk management. The panel data, consisting of 227 individuals affected by the 2013 flood in Germany, were analyzed using repeated-measures ANOVA and latent class growth analysis (LCGA) to utilize the unique temporal dimension of the data set. Results show that attitudes, such as the respondents' perceived responsibility within flood risk management, remain fairly stable over time. Changes are observed partly for risk perceptions and mainly for individual recovery and intentions to undertake risk-reducing measures. LCGA reveal heterogeneous recovery and adaptation trajectories that need to be taken into account in policies supporting individual recovery and stimulating societal preparedness. More panel studies in the flood risk domain are needed to gain better insights into the dynamics of individual recovery, risk-reducing behavior, and associated risk and protective factors. KW - adaptation behavior KW - floods KW - individual recovery KW - LCGA KW - panel data Y1 - 2020 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1111/risa.13548 SN - 0272-4332 SN - 1539-6924 VL - 40 IS - 11 SP - 2340 EP - 2359 PB - Wiley CY - Hoboken ER - TY - THES A1 - Banerjee, Abhirup T1 - Characterizing the spatio-temporal patterns of extreme events BT - from recurrence to prediction N2 - Over the past decades, there has been a growing interest in ‘extreme events’ owing to the increasing threats that climate-related extremes such as floods, heatwaves, droughts, etc., pose to society. While extreme events have diverse definitions across various disciplines, ranging from earth science to neuroscience, they are characterized mainly as dynamic occurrences within a limited time frame that impedes the normal functioning of a system. Although extreme events are rare in occurrence, it has been found in various hydro-meteorological and physiological time series (e.g., river flows, temperatures, heartbeat intervals) that they may exhibit recurrent behavior, i.e., do not end the lifetime of the system. The aim of this thesis to develop some sophisticated methods to study various properties of extreme events. One of the main challenges in analyzing such extreme event-like time series is that they have large temporal gaps due to the paucity of the number of observations of extreme events. As a result, existing time series analysis tools are usually not helpful to decode the underlying information. I use the edit distance (ED) method to analyze extreme event-like time series in their unaltered form. ED is a specific distance metric, mainly designed to measure the similarity/dissimilarity between point process-like data. I combine ED with recurrence plot techniques to identify the recurrence property of flood events in the Mississippi River in the United States. I also use recurrence quantification analysis to show the deterministic properties and serial dependency in flood events. After that, I use this non-linear similarity measure (ED) to compute the pairwise dependency in extreme precipitation event series. I incorporate the similarity measure within the framework of complex network theory to study the collective behavior of climate extremes. Under this architecture, the nodes are defined by the spatial grid points of the given spatio-temporal climate dataset. Each node is associated with a time series corresponding to the temporal evolution of the climate observation at that grid point. Finally, the network links are functions of the pairwise statistical interdependence between the nodes. Various network measures, such as degree, betweenness centrality, clustering coefficient, etc., can be used to quantify the network’s topology. We apply the methodology mentioned above to study the spatio-temporal coherence pattern of extreme rainfall events in the United States and the Ganga River basin, which reveals its relation to various climate processes and the orography of the region. The identification of precursors associated with the occurrence of extreme events in the near future is extremely important to prepare the masses for an upcoming disaster and mitigate the potential risks associated with such events. Under this motivation, I propose an in-data prediction recipe for predicting the data structures that typically occur prior to extreme events using the Echo state network, a type of Recurrent Neural Network which is a part of the reservoir computing framework. However, unlike previous works that identify precursory structures in the same variable in which extreme events are manifested (active variable), I try to predict these structures by using data from another dynamic variable (passive variable) which does not show large excursions from the nominal condition but carries imprints of these extreme events. Furthermore, my results demonstrate that the quality of prediction depends on the magnitude of events, i.e., the higher the magnitude of the extreme, the better is its predictability skill. I show quantitatively that this is because the input signals collectively form a more coherent pattern for an extreme event of higher magnitude, which enhances the efficiency of the machine to predict the forthcoming extreme events. N2 - In den letzten Jahrzehnten hat das Interesse an ‘Extremereignissen’ aufgrund der zunehmenden Bedrohung, die klimabedingte Extreme wie Überschwemmungen, Hitzewellen, Dürren usw. für die Gesellschaft darstellen, zugenommen. Obwohl Extremereignisse in verschiedenen Disziplinen - von der Geowissenschaft bis zu den Neurowissenschaften - unterschiedlich definiert werden, werden sie hauptsächlich als dynamische Ereignisse innerhalb eines begrenzten Zeitrahmens charakterisiert, die das normale Funktionieren eines Systems beeinträchtigen. Obwohl Extremereignisse selten vorkommen, wurde festgestellt, dass verschiedene hydro-meteorologische und physiologische Zeitreihen (z. B. Stromabflussmengen, Temperaturen, Herzschlagintervalle) rekurrentes Verhalten. Das heißt, sie enden nicht an der Lebensdauer des Systems. Das Ziel dieser Arbeit ist es, fortschrittliche Methoden zur Untersuchung verschiedener Eigenschaften von Extremereignissen zu entwickeln. Eine der größten Herausforderungen bei der Analyse solcher extremen Ereignisse ist, dass sie große zeitliche Lücken aufweisen, da die Anzahl beobachteter Extremereignissen gering ist. Bestehende Zeitreihenanalysetools sind daher in der Regel nicht hilfreich, um die zugrundeliegenden Informationen zu entschlüsseln. Ich verwende die Edit-Distanz (ED) Methode, um extremeereignisähnliche Zeitreihen in ihrer unveränderten Form zu analysieren. ED ist eine spezielle Abstandsmetrik, die hauptsächlich zur Messung der Ähnlichkeit/Unähnlichkeit zwischen punktprozessähnlichen Daten entwickelt wurde. Ich kombiniere ED mit Rekurrenzplots, um die Wiederkehr-Eigenschaften von Hochwasserereignissen am Mississippi in den Vereinigten Staaten zu ermitteln. Außerdem werte ich die Wiederkehr-Eigenschaften quantitativ aus, um die deterministische Charakteristik und die serielle Abhängigkeit bei Hochwasserereignissen aufzuzeigen. Anschließend verwende ich dieses nichtlineare Ähnlichkeitsmaß(ED), um die paarweise Abhängigkeit in extremen Niederschlagsereignisreihen zu berechnen. Ich verknüpfe das Ähnlichkeitsmaß mit der Theorie komplexer Netzwerke, um das kollektive Verhalten von Klimaextremen zu untersuchen. In diesem Fall werden die Knoten durch die räumlichen Gitterpunkte des zu untersuchenden raumzeitlichen Klimadatensatzes definiert. Jeder Knoten repräsentiert eine Zeitreihe, die die zeitliche Entwicklung der Klimabeobachtung an diesem Gitterpunkt beschreibt. Schließlich sind die Netzwerkverbindungen Funktionen der paarweisen statistischen Interdependenz zwischen den Knotenpunkten. Zur Quantifizierung der Netztopologie können verschiedene Netzwerkmaße wie unter anderem der Grad, die Betweenness-Zentralität, oder der Clustering-Koeffizient verwendet werden. Wir wenden die oben erwähnte Methodik an, um das raumzeitliche Kohärenzmuster extremer Niederschlagsereignisse in den Vereinigten Staaten und im Einzugsgebiet des Ganges zu untersuchen. Die Ergebnisse zeigen, dass ein Zusammenhang zwischen dem Kohärenzmuster und verschiedenen Klimaprozessen und der Orographie der Region besteht. Die Identifizierung von Vorläufern, die mit dem Auftreten von Extremereignissen in naher Zukunft verbunden sind, ist äußerst wichtig, um die Bevölkerung auf eine bevorstehende Katastrophe vorzubereiten und potenziell resultierende Risiken zu mindern. Deshalb schlage ich ein datenbasiertes Vorhersageverfahren zur Bestimmung der Datenstrukturen vor, die typischerweise vor extremen Ereignissen auftreten. Das Verfahren basiert auf dem Echo-State Netzwerk, einem rekurrenten neuronalen Netz, das dem Reservoir-Computing zugeordnet wird. Im Gegensatz zu früheren Arbeiten, die Vorläuferstrukturen in der Variablen identifizieren, in der sich Extremereignisse manifestieren (aktive Variable), versuche ich die Strukturen anhand anderer dynamischer Variablen (passive Variablen) vorherzusagen. Diese Variablen weichen selbst nicht sonderlich von ihrem eigenen Sollzustand ab, aber sie besitzen eine Aussagekraft gegenüber den Extremereignissen. Meine Ergebnisse zeigen, dass die Qualität der Vorhersage von der Magnitude der Ereignisse abhängt, d.h. je extremer ein Ereignis ist, desto besser kann es vorhergesagt werden. Ich belege quantitativ, dass dieser Zusammenhang darauf basiert, dass die gesammelten Eingangssignale aussagekräftigere Kohärenzmuster für Extremereignisse hoher Magnitude bilden. Dies erhöht die Wirksamkeit des Ansatzes bei der Vorhersage bevorstehender Extremereignisse. KW - extreme events KW - Extremereignisse KW - floods KW - extreme precipitation KW - edit distance KW - recurrence plot KW - complex network KW - echo state network KW - Überschwemmungen KW - Extremniederschläge KW - Edit-Distanz KW - Rekurrenzplot KW - komplexes Netzwerk KW - Echo-State Netzwerk Y1 - 2022 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus4-559839 ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Bubeck, Philip A1 - Botzen, W. J. Wouter A1 - Laudan, Jonas A1 - Aerts, Jeroen C. J. H. A1 - Thieken, Annegret T1 - Insights into flood-coping appraisals of protection motivation theory BT - Empirical evidence from Germany and France JF - Risk analysis N2 - Protection motivation theory (PMT) has become a popular theory to explain the risk-reducing behavior of residents against natural hazards. PMT captures the two main cognitive processes that individuals undergo when faced with a threat, namely, threat appraisal and coping appraisal. The latter describes the evaluation of possible response measures that may reduce or avert the perceived threat. Although the coping appraisal component of PMT was found to be a better predictor of protective intentions and behavior, little is known about the factors that influence individuals’ coping appraisals of natural hazards. More insight into flood-coping appraisals of PMT, therefore, are needed to better understand the decision-making process of individuals and to develop effective risk communication strategies. This study presents the results of two surveys among more than 1,600 flood-prone households in Germany and France. Five hypotheses were tested using multivariate statistics regarding factors related to flood-coping appraisals, which were derived from the PMT framework, related literature, and the literature on social vulnerability. We found that socioeconomic characteristics alone are not sufficient to explain flood-coping appraisals. Particularly, observational learning from the social environment, such as friends and neighbors, is positively related to flood-coping appraisals. This suggests that social norms and networks play an important role in flood-preparedness decisions. Providing risk and coping information can also have a positive effect. Given the strong positive influence of the social environment on flood-coping appraisals, future research should investigate how risk communication can be enhanced by making use of the observed social norms and network effects. KW - Coping appraisal KW - floods KW - protection motivation theory (PMT) KW - risk communication KW - social vulnerability Y1 - 2018 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1111/risa.12938 SN - 0272-4332 SN - 1539-6924 VL - 38 IS - 6 SP - 1239 EP - 1257 PB - Wiley CY - Hoboken ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Schmidt, Lennart A1 - Heße, Falk A1 - Attinger, Sabine A1 - Kumar, Rohini T1 - Challenges in applying machine learning models for hydrological inference: a case study for flooding events across Germany JF - Water Resources Research N2 - Machine learning (ML) algorithms are being increasingly used in Earth and Environmental modeling studies owing to the ever-increasing availability of diverse data sets and computational resources as well as advancement in ML algorithms. Despite advances in their predictive accuracy, the usefulness of ML algorithms for inference remains elusive. In this study, we employ two popular ML algorithms, artificial neural networks and random forest, to analyze a large data set of flood events across Germany with the goals to analyze their predictive accuracy and their usability to provide insights to hydrologic system functioning. The results of the ML algorithms are contrasted against a parametric approach based on multiple linear regression. For analysis, we employ a model-agnostic framework named Permuted Feature Importance to derive the influence of models' predictors. This allows us to compare the results of different algorithms for the first time in the context of hydrology. Our main findings are that (1) the ML models achieve higher prediction accuracy than linear regression, (2) the results reflect basic hydrological principles, but (3) further inference is hindered by the heterogeneity of results across algorithms. Thus, we conclude that the problem of equifinality as known from classical hydrological modeling also exists for ML and severely hampers its potential for inference. To account for the observed problems, we propose that when employing ML for inference, this should be made by using multiple algorithms and multiple methods, of which the latter should be embedded in a cross-validation routine. KW - machine learning KW - inference KW - floods Y1 - 2019 VL - 56 IS - 5 PB - John Wiley & Sons, Inc. CY - New Jersey ER -