{"id":2406,"date":"2021-09-26T10:44:22","date_gmt":"2021-09-26T08:44:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/aafloods.eu\/lets-take-action-now-before-its-too-late\/"},"modified":"2022-05-04T14:44:06","modified_gmt":"2022-05-04T12:44:06","slug":"lets-take-action-now-before-its-too-late","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/aafloods.eu\/fr\/lets-take-action-now-before-its-too-late\/","title":{"rendered":"Let\u2019s take action now before it\u2019s too late!"},"content":{"rendered":"

National and regional governments, local authorities and communities, water corporations, and scientists must collaborate urgently<\/em><\/strong> to enhance flood prevention, warning, coordination, and emergency management tools at the local level in disaster risk reduction programs. The necessity for immediate action became obvious following the flooding events that occurred around the world in 2021. Many people worldwide have been affected by an increased risk of heavy rainfall and flooding.<\/p>\n

A series of heavy rainfalls in a short period of time caused flash floods in countries like Indonesia, Mexico, Colombia, USA, Spain, India, Thailand, South Sudan, New Zealand, Ghana, Myanmar, France, Spain, Sudan, Japan, Turkey, China and Haiti<\/strong> in August and early September of 2021. These are just a few examples. In most countries affected by flooding, damage to transportation infrastructure (bridges and roads) has left many people isolated, aside from significant economic losses. Summer storms in July 2021 brought heavy rain and flooding to much of Europe. Flooding has occurred in more than 135 sites around the continent, with 40 severe and minor floods being reported. Worldwide, flooding disasters have been reported in the first half of 2021 as well. According to FloodList almost every country in the world has experienced at least one flood event so far in 2021.<\/p>\n

According to Berghuijs et al. (2017), who looked at data from 1980 to 2009, floods have become more intense and frequent over time in Europe and North America. A report of the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) informs that from 1970 to 2019 weather-related disasters have grown by five times. This rise, however, is accountable for more economic losses but fewer casualties. Figure 1 and Figure 2 depict the global and European distribution by decade of natural disasters and their related human and economic losses as reported by WMO in the Atlas of Mortality and Economic Losses from Weather, Climate and Water Extremes (1970 \u2013 2019<\/em><\/a>)<\/em> (WMO, 2021). A recent research (Bl\u00f6schl et al., 2019) discovered a rise in flood discharges in northern Europe and a declining tendency in most stream gauges in southern and eastern Europe. However, it is difficult to determine if floods are becoming more intense and\/or frequent worldwide (IPCC, 2014, Sharma et al., 2018), even though \u00a0the damages due to flooding and intense precipitation have significantly increased worldwide (Kunkel et al., 2013)<\/p>\n

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The research conducted by the CRED: Centre for Research on the Epidemiology of Catastrophes (Wallemacq and House, 2018), indicates that flood disasters accounted for more than 43 percent of all disasters registered\/reported between 1998 and 2017. Flooding occurrences accounted for 23% (US$ 656 billion) of economic damages and impacted 45 percent (2 billion) of people affected by natural disasters in the time period studied. Flooding events were responsible for 11% of all natural hazards deaths documented.<\/p>\n

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The majority of the 2021 floods had severe consequences, including the deaths of hundreds of people. In Europe, AA-Floods aims on implementing improved\/new flood risk management and response techniques, strategies, and regulations at the local scale<\/strong> in the Atlantic Area to reduce the impacts of future floods as climate change increases the frequency and\/or intensity of such events.<\/p>\n

References<\/em><\/h6>\n