Affiliation:
1. Institute of Hydraulic Engineering and Water Resource Management, RWTH Aachen University, 52066 Aachen, NRW, Germany
Abstract
Residential areas in developing arid and semi-arid countries are highly vulnerable to flooding, and water shortages have forced their inhabitants to live close to rivers. While climate change is expected to cause more extreme weather conditions in the future, adopting private loss-reduction measures can diminish flood risk. Although the number of flood models has grown significantly for developing arid and semi-arid lands, these models suffer from being incapable of performing micro-scale flood risk analysis and including household behaviors. This research work presents a novel socio-economic simulation model in the framework of flood risk management (FRM) to couple household adaptive responses with flood risk analysis. Agent-based modeling (ABM) embeds human behaviors in a flood-simulating environment. The focus of this research is the upper Kan catchment in Iran with a long history of severe flash flooding. Our results show the ability of the developed framework to address household participation in FRM activities through private precautionary measures. Moreover, the results indicate the importance of presenting such micro-level behaviors in flood modeling for a more realistic flood risk assessment. It is also demonstrated that household adaptation in a continuous way can lead to less flood risks in the region, even under climate change and the future economy. Finally, the results reveal that the remaining and diminished regional flood risks are influenced by the behavioral framework through which the individuals make decisions in adopting flood-loss-reduction measures. A similar pattern is, however, observed in household contributions over time among the discussed behavioral approaches.
Funder
German Federal Ministry of Education and Research
Reference44 articles.
1. Floodlist (2022, November 14). Available online: https://floodlist.com.
2. United Nations in Iran (2019). Post Disaster Needs Assessment (PDNA) for Iran Floods 2019, United Nations in Iran.
3. Flood risk and household losses: Empirical findings from a rural community in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Pakistan;Yaseen;Int. J. Disaster Risk Reduct.,2023
4. How flood preparedness among Jordanian citizens is influenced by self-efficacy, sense of community, experience, communication, trust and training;Gammoh;Int. J. Disaster Risk Reduct.,2023
5. Building socio-hydrological resilient cities against flash floods: Key challenges and a practical plan for arid regions;Horn;J. Hydrol.,2018