Inundations on the Black Sea coast of the Krasnodar territory of the Russian Federation were analysed for 1945 to 2013. Risks, hazards and damage from inundations here are some of the highest in the country. The large quantity and the extremeness of rainfall, and the intense flood regimes of the rivers are the main contributors. Additionally, anthropogenic impact such as badly planned economic activities in channels, floodplains and on river watersheds strongly enhance the effects.

This study develops a novel methodology to assess flood risk to people by integrating people’s vulnerability and ability to cushion hazards through coping and adapting. The model is used to estimate the effect of improving an existing early warning system. The proposed approach extends traditional risk assessments beyond material damages, complements quantitative and semi-quantitative data with subjective and local knowledge, and improves the use of commonly available information.

The Makran subduction zone is not very active seismically, but nevertheless capable of hosting destructive earthquakes and tsunami, such as the Balochistan event in 1945, which led to about 4000 casualties. Some recent studies suggest that the maximum magnitude might be higher than previously thought. We generate a set of synthetic earthquake catalogs to compute tsunami hazard along the coast of Iran, Pakistan and Makran and show how different seismicity assumptions affect the hazard.

The presented study deals with numerical modelling of floods and their interactions with buildings. By means of a case study application, a commercial software is applied to simulate flooding within a test site situated in South Tyrol (Italy). A single-family house is thereby considered and exposed to specific flood discharges. The study shows possibilities and limits of numerical modelling techniques within flood risk management and, thereby, the planning of local structural protection measures.

This paper examines the effects of climate change and drought on agricultural incomes in Spanish rural areas. Present research has focused on the effects of these extreme climatological events through response functions considering effects on crop productivity and average incomes. Among the impacts of droughts we focus on potential effects on income distribution. The study of the effects of abnormally dry periods is needed in order to perform an analysis of socio-economic aspects.

In the field of Disaster Risk Reduction (DRR), there is a proliferation of research into different ways to measure, represent, and ultimately quantify differential social vulnerability to natural hazards. This study shows how the same census data but three alternative multivariate methodologies can lead to radical differences in our assessment of the most vulnerable population groups to flood risk. A case study of the 2013 floods in the Parrett catchment, Somerset (UK), provides context.

This work couples recent advances in large scale flood hazard mapping into a pan-European flood risk model to estimate the impact of river floods in a seamless simulation, covering more than two decades. Results of this research are an important contribution in the reconstruction of a complete dataset of flood impact data. Also, it has direct implications in the area of flood early warning with regard to the rapid risk assessment of flood impacts.

Floods in urban environments cause substantial damage. Urban flood risk management requires a reliable knowledge of flood hazard, including the flow characteristics in urbanized floodplains. Here we present numerical simulations of flooding in an urban district. The computations are compared against experimental observations obtained from a remarkable laboratory set-up, representing an urban district with 14 streets and 49 crossroads. Data provide a unique benchmark for other numerical models.

We examine the spatiotemporal differences between three TC databases for the southwest Pacific region. In addition, the usefulness of pre-satellite era TC data (1945–1969) is evaluated. While changes in observational technologies from 1945 have undoubtedly improved our ability to detect and monitor TCs, we show that pre-satellite era TC data are not temporally or statistically different to post-satellite era data (1970–present).

We built a multi-criteria intelligent evaluation model to measure high rocky slope safety. An integrated method is proposed to weaken the subjective effect on the evaluation process. The quantitative and qualitative evaluation for high slope safety can be fulfilled.

Lightning is one of the major threats to modern multi-megawatt wind turbines and a concern for new generation of aircraft. Both wind turbines and aircraft can initiate lightning and very favourable conditions for lightning initiation occur in winter thunderstorms. Moreover, winter thunderstorms are characterized for producing very energetic lightning. In this paper we present the global winter lightning activity. Japan, US, Mediterranean, Argentina and New Zealand are the most active areas.

Karst plays an important role in flash floods. This study is considered a step in the identification of flood-prone areas. High variations in the measured characteristics show that karst springs are critical in flash floods. Representative and organized sampling of water characteristics in Günyüzü basin, Eskişehir, Turkey, indicated that karst groundwater characteristics can be used for the classification of karst aquifers, regarding their contribution in generating flash floods.

We designed the POLARIS website to communicate to a broader audience information on geohydrological (landslide and flood) hazards with potential consequences to the population. POLARIS publishes periodic reports, analyses of specific damaging events and blog posts. POLARIS can help multiple audiences understand how risks can be reduced through appropriate measures and behaviours, contributing to increasing the resilience of the population to geohydrological risk.

This work presents the comparison of two modelling suites (TELEMAC, MIKE21) in fundamental wave-hydrodynamics applications, and proposes a multiparametric approach for the rapid assessment of wave conditions in coastal zones. Study areas for all applications are located in South Italy. Analysis shows an overall satisfactory agreement between the two suites and provides useful insights on their capabilities, while the proposed approach was successfully implemented as part of an operational chain.

In June 2013, widespread flooding and consequent damage and losses occurred in central Europe, especially in Germany. The paper explores what data are available to investigate the adverse impacts of the event, what kind of information can be retrieved from these data, and how good data and information fulfil requirements that were recently proposed for disaster reporting on the European and international level, e.g. by the Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction 2015–2030.