Participatory development of storymaps to visualize the spatiotemporal dynamics and impacts of extreme flood events for disaster preparedness

Abstract

Floods are one of the costliest natural hazards in Switzerland and worldwide. Therefore, society is confronted with questions about protecting people and assets from flood risks. Key instruments are protective measures, land use regulations, spatial planning, and the interventions by civil protection units if flood magnitudes exceed the protection standards. Both prevention and preparedness require risk awareness from professionals, politicians, and the public. Risk awareness is generally high after an event and low after a period without major events. However, the rarity of extreme flood events limits learning from flood events. The training of intervention forces who should manage flood events with magnitudes beyond hitherto observed flood events requires a comprehensive description and visualization of the flood processes and their impacts. To address this, together with stakeholders and civil protection and intervention planning experts, we co-developed a new way to visualize the spatiotemporal dynamics of extreme flood events and thereby communicate their impacts using dynamical flood storymaps. We selected physically plausible precipitation scenarios from reforecasts to develop storylines of extreme river flood events and their socioeconomic impacts in Switzerland. The co-development process revealed which information is relevant to potential users and how it must be presented. It is shown that storylines of extreme events presented as storymaps are a valuable tool to communicate scientific results in a way that allows practitioners to gain relevant information for their work. Therefore, we built an interactive online tool (www.flooddynamics.ch), enabling the user to analyze the spatiotemporal unfolding of flood events in Switzerland from the start of precipitation to the recession of the flood. The visualization includes maps of inundated areas at hourly timesteps and the related impacts in terms of affected persons, buildings, roads, and infrastructure. Such a temporally explicit (dynamic) representation of extreme events in storymaps, in contrast to static hazard maps, which are commonly used today, is favorable for emergency intervention planning and training and thus for awareness creation and better disaster preparedness.