Abstract
Tools exist to predict fatalities related to floods, but current models do not focus on fatalities in buildings. For example, Storm Xynthia in France in 2010 resulted in 41 drowning deaths inside buildings. Therefore, there has been increasing recognition of the risk of people becoming trapped in buildings during floods. To identify buildings which could expose their occupants to a risk of death in the case of flooding, we propose the use of the extreme vulnerability index (VIE index), which identifies which buildings are at greatest risk of trapping people during floods. In addition, the “mortality function method” is used to further estimate the expected number of fatalities based on (1) groups of vulnerable people (e.g., aged or disabled), (2) the location of buildings in relation to major watercourses, and (3) the configuration of buildings (e.g., single or multiple entries and single or multiple stories). The overall framework is derived from case studies from Storm Xynthia which give a deterministic approach for deaths inside buildings for coastal floods, which is suited for low-lying areas protected by walls or sandy barriers. This methodology provides a tool which could help make decisions for adaptation strategy implementation to preserve human life.
Highlights
The method accounts for the importance of secondary houses, which could be an important parameter to assess the exposed population in the case of some touristic municipalities exposed to coastal floods. The results of both the VIE index and potential fatality assessment were calculated for seven municipalities on the French Atlantic coast [7,52]
Baie de l’Aiguillon, and they were directly impacted by Storm Xynthia: La Faute-sur-Mer
It needs to be said that only the water depth was used to specify the hazard, as the VIE index focuses on vulnerability inside buildings, with the proximity to coastal defenses being a way to estimate high rising water inside
Summary
Publisher’s Note: MDPI stays neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. Floods killed 8 million people in the last century [1]. 235 fatalities occurred in relation to 13 floods events (hurricanes and storms) were analyzed. It was concluded that 68% of the deaths were caused by people drowning in cars and on foot (33 and 25%, respectively), while just 6% occurred inside buildings [1]. 54% (out of 771 people) were drowned in buildings during Hurricane Katrina in 2005 [2], while all of the fatalities (41) caused by Storm Xynthia in France were those drowned in buildings [3,4]. Boissier [5] suggested that for high-magnitude, low-frequency events, most of the fatalities occur inside buildings
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