TY - JOUR
T1 - The influence of antecedent conditions on flood risk in sub-Saharan Africa
AU - Bischiniotis, Konstantinos
AU - Van Den Hurk, Bart
AU - Jongman, Brenden
AU - Coughlan De Perez, Erin
AU - Veldkamp, Ted
AU - De Moel, Hans
AU - Aerts, Jeroen
N1 - Funding Information:
Acknowledgements. We thank Munich Re for providing reported flood data from the NatCatSERVICE database for the IMPREX project. This project was funded by NWO VICI grant no. 016.140.067, by NWO grant no. 869-15 001, by FP7 project Earth2Observe grant no. 603608 and by UK Natural Environment Research Council (NE/P000525/1).
Publisher Copyright:
© Author(s) 2018. This work is distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License.
Copyright:
Copyright 2018 Elsevier B.V., All rights reserved.
PY - 2018/1/19
Y1 - 2018/1/19
N2 - Most flood early warning systems have predominantly focused on forecasting floods with lead times of hours or days. However, physical processes during longer timescales can also contribute to flood generation. In this study, we follow a pragmatic approach to analyse the hydro-meteorological pre-conditions of 501 historical damaging floods from 1980 to 2010 in sub-Saharan Africa. These are separated into (a) weather timescale (0-6 days) and (b) seasonal timescale conditions (up to 6 months) before the event. The 7-day precipitation preceding a flood event (PRE7) and the standardized precipitation evapotranspiration index (SPEI) are analysed for the two timescale domains, respectively. Results indicate that high PRE7 does not always generate floods by itself. Seasonal SPEIs, which are not directly correlated with PRE7, exhibit positive (wet) values prior to most flood events across different averaging times, indicating a relationship with flooding. This paper provides evidence that bringing together weather and seasonal conditions can lead to improved flood risk preparedness.
AB - Most flood early warning systems have predominantly focused on forecasting floods with lead times of hours or days. However, physical processes during longer timescales can also contribute to flood generation. In this study, we follow a pragmatic approach to analyse the hydro-meteorological pre-conditions of 501 historical damaging floods from 1980 to 2010 in sub-Saharan Africa. These are separated into (a) weather timescale (0-6 days) and (b) seasonal timescale conditions (up to 6 months) before the event. The 7-day precipitation preceding a flood event (PRE7) and the standardized precipitation evapotranspiration index (SPEI) are analysed for the two timescale domains, respectively. Results indicate that high PRE7 does not always generate floods by itself. Seasonal SPEIs, which are not directly correlated with PRE7, exhibit positive (wet) values prior to most flood events across different averaging times, indicating a relationship with flooding. This paper provides evidence that bringing together weather and seasonal conditions can lead to improved flood risk preparedness.
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85040907158&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.5194/nhess-18-271-2018
DO - 10.5194/nhess-18-271-2018
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:85040907158
VL - 18
SP - 271
EP - 285
JO - Natural Hazards and Earth System Sciences
JF - Natural Hazards and Earth System Sciences
SN - 1684-9981
IS - 1
ER -