Who floods? A commentary on the uneven burden of urban flooding in Nature Sustainability.
In this piece, Professor Paul Bates asks: Who floods? Does everyone have an equal chance of being affected, or do certain groups within populations shoulder more of the burden?
With catastrophic events, like those seen this year in the United States and Pakistan, increasing in severity, this piece highlights the impact that new modelling approaches will have on empowering us to address critical societal questions about the nature of floods and their economic impact.
One approach, it is suggested, is by scaling a new numerical model outlined in research published by Saunders et al. Capable of simulating flooding at 3m spatial resolution across the greater Los Angeles area, Bates notes:
“Sanders and colleagues have thus given us a glimpse of the future of flood modelling, and the challenge now is to make this a reality more widely.”