Natural Resources, School of
Document Type
Article
Date of this Version
8-4-2022
Citation
Nature, Vol 608, 4 August 2022 doi:10.1038/s41586-022-04917-5
Abstract
Risk management has reduced vulnerability to floods and droughts globally1,2, yet their impacts are still increasing3. An improved understanding of the causes of changing impacts is therefore needed, but has been hampered by a lack of empirical data4,5. On the basis of a global dataset of 45 pairs of events that occurred within the same area, we show that risk management generally reduces the impacts of floods and droughts but faces difficulties in reducing the impacts of unprecedented events of a magnitude not previously experienced. If the second event was much more hazardous than the first, its impact was almost always higher. This is because management was not designed to deal with such extreme events: for example, they exceeded the design levels of levees and reservoirs. In two success stories, the impact of the second, more hazardous, event was lower, as a result of improved risk management governance and high investment in integrated management. The observed difficulty of managing unprecedented events is alarming, given that more extreme hydrological events are projected owing to climate change3.
Supplemental tables
Kreibich NATURE 2022 The challenge of unprecedented DATA 1.xlsx (11 kB)
Kreibich NATURE 2022 The challenge of unprecedented DATA 2.xlsx (16 kB)
Kreibich NATURE 2022 The challenge of unprecedented DATA 3.xlsx (10 kB)
Kreibich NATURE 2022 The challenge of unprecedented DATA 4.xlsx (11 kB)
Kreibich NATURE 2022 The challenge of unprecedented DATA 5.xlsx (11 kB)
Kreibich NATURE 2022 The challenge of unprecedented DATA 6.xlsx (15 kB)
Included in
Natural Resources and Conservation Commons, Natural Resources Management and Policy Commons, Other Environmental Sciences Commons
Comments
Open access