DRASTIC: Static and dynamic flood risk assessment in Sweden under climate change

Sweden has both snow and rain dominated hydrological regions, with fundamentally different response to global warming.

Today, the main source of information is the flood risk mapping – including climate change impacts – by the Swedish Civil Contingencies Agency (MSB), for the major rivers. While a very important effort, it is based on specific models (HBV/MIKE) and an earlier generation of climate models.

Furthermore, it uses a static approach assuming a spatially uniform risk level, which is not physically consistent and realistic.

Finally, the resulting flood risk is not translated into expected damage.In DRASTIC we will complement and extend today’s knowledge on future flood risk in a number of ways.

First of all we will perform a similar static flood risk analysis as previously done by MSB, but with other hydro-models (HYPE/LISFLOOD), state-of-the-art climate projections (EURO-CORDEX) and national coverage.

Secondly, we will develop a dynamic approach to flood risk mapping, based on very long simulations with a new weather generator, and use it to simulate a catalogue of future spatial consistent flood events. Last but not least, we will develop a flood damage model intended for national applicability.

The results will constitute a major advancement with respect to flood risk assessment in Sweden and substantially improve decision support for climate adaptation.