M.C. Llasat (1), M. Llasat-Botija (1), M. Cortés (1), V. Kotroni (2), K. Papagiannaki (2), O. Petrucci (3), A.A. Pasqua (3), J. Rosselló (4), F. Vinet (5), 2017, Coping with floods in the Northern part of the Mediterranean_ the application of an international database on flood events for a 35 years period, 10th HyMeX workshop, Barcelona, Spain, 4-7/07/2017,
URL: http://www.cnr.it/prodotto/i/371800

The contribution departs from the updating of the FLOODHYMEX database (Llasat et al, 2013) that at present includes all the catastrophic flood events produced on the period 1981-2015 in Catalonia, Valencia and Balearic Islands (Spain), PACA, Languedoc-Roussillon and Midi Pyrenees (France), Calabria (Italy) and Greece. After the proposal of a common definition of catastrophic event (including the event duration, starting and ending) and the analysis of the main climatic features and statistics this updated data base has been compared with Emergency Events Database (EM-DAT), the Natural Hazards Assessment Network (NATHAN) of the reinsurance firm Munich Re and Civil Protection flood databases. Trends have been compared with those obtained for other periods in order to understand the potential influence of non-climatic factors. The precipitation thresholds associated to floods (mainly flash floods) have been analysed from daily precipitation data that has been provided by AEMET (Agencia Estatal de Meteorología, Spain), NOA (National Observatory of Athens, Greece) and Météo France, and has been complemented by EOBS (25x25 km2). The study has been complemented with the data base on casualties, for the same period, which records detailed information about the time of occurrence and place where fatalities occurred, circumstances in which fatalities occurred, age, gender and specific vulnerability circumstances. In order to analyse specific events with a detailed information (including economic one), a minimum of two cases of study have been selected for each country. Selected cases have been identified as "remarkable cases" using the definition proposed by Boudou (2015). As example the flood event of June 2013 that affected Catalonia and Midi-Pyrenees, and the flood event that affected Greece on October 2015. These cases have been useful to illustrate the early warning systems, recovery measures and post-event analysis in each region. This contribution follows the European Directive on Floods (DIRECTIVE 2007/60/CE, European Parliament, 2007) which looks at flood risk management plans focusing on prevention, protection and preparation. The contribution has been developed by the FloodHymeX Task Force of HYMEX and has been supported by the Spanish project HOPE.

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