Open AccessApplication and validation of mortality functions to assess the consequences of flooding to people
Author(s) -
Di Mauro M.,
de Bruijn K.M.
Publication year - 2012
Publication title -
journal of flood risk management
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.049
H-Index - 36
ISSN - 1753-318X
DOI - 10.1111/j.1753-318x.2011.01131.x
Subject(s) - flooding (psychology) , flood myth , context (archaeology) , flood risk assessment , hazard , event (particle physics) , geography , population , environmental planning , environmental resource management , risk analysis (engineering) , environmental science , business , environmental health , psychology , ecology , medicine , biology , psychotherapist , physics , archaeology , quantum mechanics
The assessment of potential consequences of a flood event to the exposed population is a key question for flood risk managers. This issue is increasingly a triggering research on assessing potential numbers of fatalities because of flooding. In the past, mortality functions were proposed to estimate the fatalities in areas that are exposed to a hazard because of flood defence failures‐in the N etherlands. This paper describes a study undertaken to validate those mortality functions and assesses their applicability for appraising consequences of flooding to people in a UK ‐specific context. The functions were applied to the 1953 N orth S ea S torm and, in particular, to the C anvey I sland that suffered from 58 fatalities as consequence of this flood event. This paper describes the results of this research and provides a review of the criteria used to apply the functions, as well as guidelines for applying these functions in a UK context.