In an illuminating study, Rentschler et al. leverage data to analyze populations at risk of flood exposure. They explore the overlap between poverty, geography, and flood risk while taking into account pluvial, fluvial, and coastal flooding. Their work reveals that hundreds of millions of people in low-income regions are directly exposed to flood risk. The authors emphasize that efforts towards global flood mitigation should take socioeconomic factors into account since many low-income regions have both high flood risk and poor existing flood mitigation measures in place.
#geography #global #asia #africa #datascience
Floods are most devastating for those who can least afford to be hit. Globally, 1.8 billion people face high flood risks; 89% of them live in developing countries; 170 million of them live in extreme poverty making them most vulnerable.