Flood exposure analysis of road infrastructure – Comparison of different methods at national level

Papilloud, Tsolmongerel; Röthlisberger, Veronika; Loreti, Simone; Keiler, Margreth (2020). Flood exposure analysis of road infrastructure – Comparison of different methods at national level. International journal of disaster risk reduction, 47, p. 101548. Elsevier 10.1016/j.ijdrr.2020.101548

	Text 1-s2.0-S221242091931413X-main.pdf - Published Version Restricted to registered users only Available under License Publisher holds Copyright. Download (5MB)
Preview	Text exposure_analysis.pdf - Accepted Version Available under License Creative Commons: Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works (CC-BY-NC-ND). Download (8MB) | Preview

Assessing the flood exposure of infrastructure is crucial for sustainable flood risk management. We propose to define road exposure to floods as “any road segment/element located within a flood hazard zone”. On the example of Switzerland, we develop and compare three methods to assess the flood exposure of the road infrastructure: absolute road area potentially flooded (method A), relative road area potentially flooded (method B), and a network-based approach using the edge betweenness centrality index (method C). The results are aggregated and ranked in grid cells of 2 km by 2 km for comparison. The ranks are directly proportional to exposure levels. The results present distinct spatial patterns; grid cells with higher values in method A indicate where more road surfaces are in a flood hazard zone (urban or high road density areas in flood plains), while method B highlights where most of the road surface is in flood hazard zones of predominantly mountainous areas of Switzerland. Higher values in method C present areas where the most-connected road links within a network are exposed to floods. Most of the grid cells that have higher values in method B than in method C indicate isolated mountain valleys that can be accessed only by a single road exposed to floods. The study demonstrates the importance of an appropriate choice of methods in flood exposure analysis. As exposure analysis is a key step in flood risk assessment, the presented results provide information essential for decision making in disaster risk reduction.

Interest & Impact

Downloads

113 since deposited on 14 May 2020
56 in the past 12 months

Citations

5 Citations in Web of Science ®
6 Citations in Scopus

Search

in Google Scholar™

Services

Actions (login required)

Edit item

Actions (login required)

Edit item