Abstract
This study investigates the trends in economic damages caused by three types of inland floods (flash flood, flood, and heavy rain) in the United States and the variations in related hazard and vulnerability indicators between 1996 and 2016. We explore the underlying mechanisms based on a survey-based dataset maintained by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) National Weather Service. An annual average of 6518 flood occurrences was reported, which caused economic damages of 3351 million USD per year. Flash flood and flood contributed to 53% and 32% of total occurrences and was associated with a larger share of damaging events (SDE). Results show that the higher impacts by flood and flash flood on property and crop are partly attributed to the greater intensity of rainfall. In addition, flood has the highest unit cost of damages. Notably, despite an upward tendency in economic damages by flash floods, no evident change trend is observed for inland floods as a whole. Further analysis shows changes in economic damages by heavy rain and flash flood are mainly governed by the increased annual frequency and hazard intensity, but the change of trend in their vulnerability indicators (i.e., SDE and Damage Per Event (DPE)) is not obvious. Regarding floods, it was not possible to attribute the variations in economic losses to hazard and vulnerability, as no significant tendency is found except for an increasing SDE. Despite limitations of length of records, data collection, and methodology, the difference in economic impacts and the related hazard and vulnerability revealed in this study can help better target future adaptation and mitigation measures.
Highlights
Flooding is one of the major natural hazards causing enormous damages to society and the environment [1,2,3]
Floods have caused an annual average of 6518 occurrences and economic losses of 3351 million USD per year, among which flash flood and flood contributed the most (i.e., 53% and 58%, respectively)
In comparison to heavy rain, the number and intensity of damaging events induced by flood and flash flood are much larger, resulting in more severe and frequent damages
Summary
Flooding is one of the major natural hazards causing enormous damages to society and the environment [1,2,3]. In the 2017 NOAA Billion-Dollar Weather and Climate Disasters datasets, flooding is identified as one of the top natural hazards with economic damages exceeding 1 billion USD [11,12]. Within the context of global warming, a growing number of studies have shown concerns about rising damages due to increases in flood hazard and vulnerability at the global and regional scales [13,14,15,16,17,18]. Disentangling the relative contribution of these factors to damages can help better understand the underlying mechanism of flood risk chain and mitigate the impacts in a changing environment. We investigate historical changes in three types of inland flood damages and the underlying drivers in the United States using a survey-based dataset only. The insights gained from this study have implications for better management of flood risk in the future
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