TY - JOUR A1 - Thieken, Annegret A1 - Bessel, Tina A1 - Kienzler, Sarah A1 - Kreibich, Heidi A1 - Mueller, Meike A1 - Pisi, Sebastian A1 - Schroeter, Kai T1 - The flood of June 2013 in Germany: how much do we know about its impacts? JF - Natural hazards and earth system sciences N2 - In June 2013, widespread flooding and consequent damage and losses occurred in Central Europe, especially in Germany. This paper explores what data are available to investigate the adverse impacts of the event, what kind of information can be retrieved from these data and how well data and information fulfil requirements that were recently proposed for disaster reporting on the European and international levels. In accordance with the European Floods Directive (2007/60/EC), impacts on human health, economic activities (and assets), cultural heritage and the environment are described on the national and sub-national scale. Information from governmental reports is complemented by communications on traffic disruptions and surveys of flood-affected residents and companies. Overall, the impacts of the flood event in 2013 were manifold. The study reveals that flood-affected residents suffered from a large range of impacts, among which mental health and supply problems were perceived more seriously than financial losses. The most frequent damage type among affected companies was business interruption. This demonstrates that the current scientific focus on direct (financial) damage is insufficient to describe the overall impacts and severity of flood events. The case further demonstrates that procedures and standards for impact data collection in Germany are widely missing. Present impact data in Germany are fragmentary, heterogeneous, incomplete and difficult to access. In order to fulfil, for example, the monitoring and reporting requirements of the Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction 2015-2030 that was adopted in March 2015 in Sendai, Japan, more efforts on impact data collection are needed. Y1 - 2016 U6 - https://doi.org/10.5194/nhess-16-1519-2016 SN - 1561-8633 VL - 16 SP - 1519 EP - 1540 PB - Copernicus CY - Göttingen ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Thieken, Annegret A1 - Bessel, Tina A1 - Kienzler, Sarah A1 - Kreibich, Heidi A1 - Müller, Meike A1 - Pisi, Sebastian A1 - Schröter, Kai T1 - The flood of June 2013 in Germany BT - how much do we know about its impacts? JF - National Hazards Earth System Science N2 - In June 2013, widespread flooding and consequent damage and losses occurred in Central Europe, especially in Germany. This paper explores what data are available to investigate the adverse impacts of the event, what kind of information can be retrieved from these data and how well data and information fulfil requirements that were recently proposed for disaster reporting on the European and international levels. In accordance with the European Floods Directive (2007/60/EC), impacts on human health, economic activities (and assets), cultural heritage and the environment are described on the national and sub-national scale. Information from governmental reports is complemented by communications on traffic disruptions and surveys of flood-affected residents and companies. Overall, the impacts of the flood event in 2013 were manifold. The study reveals that flood-affected residents suffered from a large range of impacts, among which mental health and supply problems were perceived more seriously than financial losses. The most frequent damage type among affected companies was business interruption. This demonstrates that the current scientific focus on direct (financial) damage is insufficient to describe the overall impacts and severity of flood events. The case further demonstrates that procedures and standards for impact data collection in Germany are widely missing. Present impact data in Germany are fragmentary, heterogeneous, incomplete and difficult to access. In order to fulfil, for example, the monitoring and reporting requirements of the Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction 2015–2030 that was adopted in March 2015 in Sendai, Japan, more efforts on impact data collection are needed. Y1 - 2016 U6 - https://doi.org/10.5194/nhess-16-1519-2016 IS - 16 SP - 1519 EP - 1540 PB - Copernicus Publications CY - Göttingen ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Do Thi Chinh, A1 - Bubeck, Philip A1 - Nguyen Viet Dung, A1 - Kreibich, Heidi T1 - The 2011 flood event in the Mekong Delta: preparedness, response, damage and recovery of private households and small businesses JF - Disasters : the journal of disaster studies, policy and management N2 - Floods frequently cause substantial economic and human losses, particularly in developing countries. For the development of sound flood risk management schemes that reduce flood consequences, detailed insights into the different components of the flood risk management cycle, such as preparedness, response, flood impact analyses and recovery, are needed. However, such detailed insights are often lacking: commonly, only (aggregated) data on direct flood damage are available. Other damage categories such as losses owing to the disruption of production processes are usually not considered, resulting in incomplete risk assessments and possibly inappropriate recommendations for risk management. In this paper, data from 858 face-to-face interviews among flood-prone households and small businesses in Can Tho city in the Vietnamese Mekong Delta are presented to gain better insights into the damage caused by the 2011 flood event and its management by households and businesses. KW - Can Tho KW - floods KW - flood damage KW - flood loss KW - flood risk management KW - Mekong Delta KW - Vietnam Y1 - 2016 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1111/disa.12171 SN - 0361-3666 SN - 1467-7717 VL - 40 SP - 753 EP - 778 PB - Wiley-Blackwell CY - Hoboken ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Thieken, Annegret A1 - Kienzler, Sarah A1 - Kreibich, Heidi A1 - Kuhlicke, Christian A1 - Kunz, Michael A1 - Mühr, Bernhard A1 - Müller, Meike A1 - Otto, Antje A1 - Petrow, Theresia A1 - Pisi, Sebastian A1 - Schröter, Kai T1 - Review of the flood risk management system in Germany after the major flood in 2013 JF - Ecology and society : E&S ; a journal of integrative science for resilience and sustainability N2 - Widespread flooding in June 2013 caused damage costs of €6 to 8 billion in Germany, and awoke many memories of the floods in August 2002, which resulted in total damage of €11.6 billion and hence was the most expensive natural hazard event in Germany up to now. The event of 2002 does, however, also mark a reorientation toward an integrated flood risk management system in Germany. Therefore, the flood of 2013 offered the opportunity to review how the measures that politics, administration, and civil society have implemented since 2002 helped to cope with the flood and what still needs to be done to achieve effective and more integrated flood risk management. The review highlights considerable improvements on many levels, in particular (1) an increased consideration of flood hazards in spatial planning and urban development, (2) comprehensive property-level mitigation and preparedness measures, (3) more effective flood warnings and improved coordination of disaster response, and (4) a more targeted maintenance of flood defense systems. In 2013, this led to more effective flood management and to a reduction of damage. Nevertheless, important aspects remain unclear and need to be clarified. This particularly holds for balanced and coordinated strategies for reducing and overcoming the impacts of flooding in large catchments, cross-border and interdisciplinary cooperation, the role of the general public in the different phases of flood risk management, as well as a transparent risk transfer system. Recurring flood events reveal that flood risk management is a continuous task. Hence, risk drivers, such as climate change, land-use changes, economic developments, or demographic change and the resultant risks must be investigated at regular intervals, and risk reduction strategies and processes must be reassessed as well as adapted and implemented in a dialogue with all stakeholders. KW - August 2002 flood KW - Central Europe KW - Floods Directive KW - governance KW - June 2013 flood KW - risk management cycle Y1 - 2016 U6 - https://doi.org/10.5751/ES-08547-210251 SN - 1708-3087 SN - 1195-5449 VL - 21 IS - 2 PB - Resilience Alliance CY - Wolfville, NS ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Kreibich, Heidi A1 - Botto, Anna A1 - Merz, Bruno A1 - Schröter, Kai T1 - Probabilistic, Multivariable Flood Loss Modeling on the Mesoscale with BT-FLEMO JF - Risk analysis N2 - Flood loss modeling is an important component for risk analyses and decision support in flood risk management. Commonly, flood loss models describe complex damaging processes by simple, deterministic approaches like depth-damage functions and are associated with large uncertainty. To improve flood loss estimation and to provide quantitative information about the uncertainty associated with loss modeling, a probabilistic, multivariable Bagging decision Tree Flood Loss Estimation MOdel (BT-FLEMO) for residential buildings was developed. The application of BT-FLEMO provides a probability distribution of estimated losses to residential buildings per municipality. BT-FLEMO was applied and validated at the mesoscale in 19 municipalities that were affected during the 2002 flood by the River Mulde in Saxony, Germany. Validation was undertaken on the one hand via a comparison with six deterministic loss models, including both depth-damage functions and multivariable models. On the other hand, the results were compared with official loss data. BT-FLEMO outperforms deterministic, univariable, and multivariable models with regard to model accuracy, although the prediction uncertainty remains high. An important advantage of BT-FLEMO is the quantification of prediction uncertainty. The probability distribution of loss estimates by BT-FLEMO well represents the variation range of loss estimates of the other models in the case study. KW - Damage modeling KW - multiparameter KW - probabilistic KW - uncertainty KW - validation Y1 - 2016 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1111/risa.12650 SN - 0272-4332 SN - 1539-6924 VL - 37 IS - 4 SP - 774 EP - 787 PB - Wiley CY - Hoboken ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Rözer, Viktor A1 - Müller, Meike A1 - Bubeck, Philip A1 - Kienzler, Sarah A1 - Thieken, Annegret A1 - Pech, Ina A1 - Schröter, Kai A1 - Buchholz, Oliver A1 - Kreibich, Heidi T1 - Coping with Pluvial Floods by Private Households JF - Water N2 - Pluvial floods have caused severe damage to urban areas in recent years. With a projected increase in extreme precipitation as well as an ongoing urbanization, pluvial flood damage is expected to increase in the future. Therefore, further insights, especially on the adverse consequences of pluvial floods and their mitigation, are needed. To gain more knowledge, empirical damage data from three different pluvial flood events in Germany were collected through computer-aided telephone interviews. Pluvial flood awareness as well as flood experience were found to be low before the respective flood events. The level of private precaution increased considerably after all events, but is mainly focused on measures that are easy to implement. Lower inundation depths, smaller potential losses as compared with fluvial floods, as well as the fact that pluvial flooding may occur everywhere, are expected to cause a shift in damage mitigation from precaution to emergency response. However, an effective implementation of emergency measures was constrained by a low dissemination of early warnings in the study areas. Further improvements of early warning systems including dissemination as well as a rise in pluvial flood preparedness are important to reduce future pluvial flood damage. KW - pluvial floods KW - surface water flooding KW - emergency response KW - early warning KW - preparedness KW - damage KW - mitigation Y1 - 2016 U6 - https://doi.org/10.3390/w8070304 SN - 2073-4441 VL - 8 PB - MDPI CY - Basel ER -