Flood risk assessment of the European road network

River floods pose a significant threat to road transport infrastructure in Europe. This study presents a high-resolution object-based continental-scale assessment of direct flood risk of the European road network for the present climate, using high-resolution exposure data from OpenStreetMap. A new...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Natural hazards and earth system sciences 2021-03, Vol.21 (3), p.1011-1027
Main Authors: van Ginkel, Kees C. H., Dottori, Francesco, Alfieri, Lorenzo, Feyen, Luc, Koks, Elco E.
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Construction costs
Damage
Digital mapping
Environmental risk
Flood damage
Flood risk
Floods
GDP
Graph representations
Gross Domestic Product
High resolution
Infrastructure
Land use
Resolution
Risk assessment
Risk management
Risk reduction
Rivers
Road transportation
Roads
Roads & highways
Segments
Transportation networks
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Summary:River floods pose a significant threat to road transport infrastructure in Europe. This study presents a high-resolution object-based continental-scale assessment of direct flood risk of the European road network for the present climate, using high-resolution exposure data from OpenStreetMap. A new set of road-specific damage functions is developed. The expected annual direct damage from large river floods to road infrastructure in Europe is EUR 230 million per year. Compared to grid-based approaches, the object-based approach is more precise and provides more action perspective for road owners because it calculates damage directly for individual road segments while accounting for segment-specific attributes. This enables the identification of European hotspots, such as roads in the Alps and along the Sava River. A first comparison to a reference case shows that the new object-based method computes realistic damage estimates, paving the way for targeted risk reduction strategies.
ISSN:1684-9981
1561-8633
1684-9981
DOI:10.5194/nhess-21-1011-2021