Abstract
The most severe flood events in Turkey were determined for the period 1960–2014 by considering the number of fatalities, the number of affected people, and the total economic losses as indicators. The potential triggering mechanisms (i.e., atmospheric circulations and precipitation amounts) and aggravating pathways (i.e., topographic features, catchment size, land use types, and soil properties) of these 25 events were analyzed. On this basis, a new approach was developed to identify the main influencing factor per event and to provide additional information for determining the dominant flood occurrence pathways for severe floods. The events were then classified through hierarchical cluster analysis. As a result, six different clusters were found and characterized. Cluster 1 comprised flood events that were mainly influenced by drainage characteristics (e.g., catchment size and shape); Cluster 2 comprised events aggravated predominantly by urbanization; steep topography was identified to be the dominant factor for Cluster 3; extreme rainfall was determined as the main triggering factor for Cluster 4; saturated soil conditions were found to be the dominant factor for Cluster 5; and orographic effects of mountain ranges characterized Cluster 6. This study determined pathway patterns of the severe floods in Turkey with regard to their main causal or aggravating mechanisms. Accordingly, geomorphological properties are of major importance in large catchments in eastern and northeastern Anatolia. In addition, in small catchments, the share of urbanized area seems to be an important factor for the extent of flood impacts. This paper presents an outcome that could be used for future urban planning and flood risk prevention studies to understand the flood mechanisms in different regions of Turkey.
Highlights
Turkey has been seriously affected by flood events, especially in the last fifty years
We developed a new approach that allows us to evaluate the dominant factor of flood-aggravating mechanisms on a regional basis in Turkey using publicly accessible and free data sources
To analyze the influence of the Atmospheric Circulation Patterns (ACP) per season, we looked at the overarching form of circulations
Summary
Turkey has been seriously affected by flood events, especially in the last fifty years. 1957 and 2002 based on soil moisture, weather patterns, and flood types to understand the relationship between hydro-meteorological patterns and flood types. Turkington et al [4] classified the floods in two different Alpine catchments, Ubaye (France) and Salzach (Austria), based on temperature, precipitation indicators, and day of the year to identify changes in the distribution of flood types and characteristics of the flood types for future climate scenarios. Prudhomme et al [5] classified the flood sensitivity of the catchments in Great Britain for future climate scenarios in a condition of changing precipitation, temperature, and potential evapotranspiration. Schröter et al [6] evaluated the hydro-meteorological factors (i.e., precipitation, antecedent conditions, initial river flow, and peak flood discharge) using extreme value statistics in order to assess the causal mechanism of the June
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