(CNN) — As the world rapidly urbanizes, the amount of building in flood-prone areas is soaring, according to new research, sparking concerns about people’s vulnerability to disasters as the climate crisis escalates. Between 1985 and 2015, the number of settlements – from small villages to mega-cities – with the highest flood hazard exposure increased by...
As the world rapidly urbanizes, the amount of building in flood-prone areas is soaring, according to new research, sparking concerns about people’s vulnerability to disasters as the climate crisis escalates.The Matlacha neighborhood destroyed in the aftermath of Hurricane Ian in Fort Myers, Florida, on September 30, 2022. is soaring, according to new research, sparking concerns about people’s vulnerability to disasters as the climate crisis escalates.
They found over this period, as the world’s settlements grew by 85%, urbanization happened much more rapidly in high-hazard flood zones than in areas with low flood risk. Municipal workers clean up the streets after waters receded in the old city of Hoi An on October 30, 2020, in the aftermath of Typhoon Molave.
While higher income countries mostly saw relatively slow growth in flood-prone zones over the 30 year period, many – including the US, Japan and the Netherlands – already had many settlements in areas at high risk of flooding before 1985 and have had to spend large amounts to protect them, according to the report.There are many reasons why the amount of building on land vulnerable to flooding is shooting up, but scarcity is a major driver.
Sometimes the economic opportunities are assumed to outweigh the risk of disaster, such as for major port cities, beachfront communities or tourist areas. Other reasons include a lack of flood data, poor urban planning or weak regulation.
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Global evidence of rapid urban growth in flood zones since 1985Disaster losses are increasing and evidence is mounting that climate change is driving up the probability of extreme natural shocks1–3. Yet it has also proved politically expedient to invoke climate change as an exogenous force that supposedly places disasters beyond the influence of local and national authorities4,5. However, locally determined patterns of urbanization and spatial development are key factors to the exposure and vulnerability of people to climatic shocks6. Using high-resolution annual data, this study shows that, since 1985, human settlements around the world—from villages to megacities—have expanded continuously and rapidly into present-day flood zones. In many regions, growth in the most hazardous flood zones is outpacing growth in non-exposed zones by a large margin, particularly in East Asia, where high-hazard settlements have expanded 60% faster than flood-safe settlements. These results provide systematic evidence of a divergence in the exposure of countries to flood hazards. Instead of adapting their exposure, many countries continue to actively amplify their exposure to increasingly frequent climatic shocks. Analysis of high-resolution annual data shows that global human settlements have expanded continuously and rapidly into flood zones, with those in the most hazardous zones increasing by 122% from 1985 to 2015.
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