Disproportionate Effects of Flooding in Global Basins: Delineating Common Characteristics, Trends, and Impacts

In recent years, climate change-induced variations in the water and climatic cycle have led to increased frequency and intensity in the occurrence of floods globally. Floods can either eventuate as a result of intense storms or cyclones in coastal areas or by cloudbursts or prolonged monsoons in inland regions. Nonetheless, in both cases, these events affect people living in vulnerable areas more drastically. Flood vulnerability, in general, can be quantified in terms of impaired productivity, higher likelihood of infrastructure damages and economic losses, and displacement of local communities. Certain basins in the world are becoming exceedingly vulnerable to flooding either due to their geographic positioning or because of their disadvantaged socio-demographic circumstances. Some developing countries in particular are challenged by this more since a substantial proportion of their people live in densely populated cities that lie over a floodplain. For instance, about 70 million people in Bangladesh reside in flood-prone regions. Adopting effective control measures in these cases, consequently, becomes challenging both due to economic and physical constraints. Several basins around the world share this common trait, and hence studying the underlying similarities in the impacts of flooding in different global basins and their socio-economic consequences is important for targeting flood mitigation efforts. In this study, we use the data from the Emergency Events Database to study the mutual characteristics of flooding, their trends, and socio-economic impacts in selected river basins around the world (between 1990 and 2022). To do this, we employ both statistical techniques and a machine-learning classification model to delineate the common quantitative and qualitative features in the data. Our analyses results indicate that some basins are more vulnerable to flooding, and the vulnerable basins share similar features notably in terms of socio-economic impacts. We also highlight the recent drastic floods observed over the last 10 years, discerning their trends and impacts based on different geographic and demographic contexts. The results of this study offer a chance to understand the commonalities of flooding in different basins, and the discerned insights would enable the categorization of different basins to flood vulnerability in a better way, particularly from a socio-hydro-economy-centric standpoint.