Representation of exposure and vulnerability in risk assessments

A common understanding of the drivers of flood and drought risk and ways in which flood and drought impacts materialize is crucial for improved assessments and for the identification and (spatial) planning of targeted flood and drought risk reduction and adaptation options. Assessing exposure to floods involves evaluating the extent to which people, property, infrastructure, and ecosystems are at risk from potential flooding events. Several methods and tools can be used to assess this exposure, ranging from basic mapping techniques to sophisticated modeling approaches. Even more approaches can be identified to assess the vulnerability to floods and droughts. Among these are the use of indicators, water depth-damage curves, analyses on dependencies of communities to specific livelihoods or industries, surveys and questionnaires. What methods and information sources are used, which impacts are considered, such as direct and indirect damage, monetary and non-monetary damage, and how people, assets, infrastructure and land use are mapped and/or classified as well as how this is translated into vulnerability may very well lead to considerable differences in the quantification of the risk. 

Our goal is to investigate to what extent the choice of way the exposure and vulnerability is addressed in risk assessments explains differences between the countries in the assessments of the adverse consequences resulting from extremely wet and dry periods. 

With a group of MSc students of different universities we will assess how different countries address exposure and vulnerability to floods in the regional transboundary basins. We will not only focus on leading measures of flood impact such as direct damage to physical assets, which paints a picture of what is exposed and to what degree, we will also explore how to assess who is exposed to floods and make attempts to map changes in time of exposure and vulnerability. Open national registers will be researched as potential sources of socio-economic data of relevance for assessing exposure. Where such data are lacking or provide insufficient information EUROSTAT, CORINNE land cover data and/or data sources such as OpenStreetMaps will be used to complete the information. 

To incorporate this information into vulnerability assessments we will investigate how the different countries perceive vulnerability and compare the methods they use to quantify or assess the vulnerability