Author(s): Maria Aguilera-Vidal; Maria I. Ortega; Marc Sanuy; Jose A. Jimenez
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Keywords: No Keywords
Abstract: The NW Mediterranean coastal zone is frequently subject to the impact of rainstorms, leading to flash floods, as well as wave storms, resulting in coastal erosion and flooding. The associated damages from these events have exhibited an increasing trend in recent decades (e. g. Llasat et al. 2014; Jimenez et al. 2012). Moreover, a recent study in this area has revealed that the joint occurrence of rainstorms and wave storms is relatively common, albeit with a high spatial variability (Sanuy et al. 2021). These compound events pose a significant challenge for risk management services, as they have the potential to exacerbate the impacts of individual (contributing) events and distribute damages across the territory, thereby straining such services. From a risk management perspective, it is crucial to comprehensively characterize the occurrence of such compound events, complementing the traditional approach of studying individual events. In this context, the main aim of this work is to characterize compound events in the Catalan coast (NW Mediterranean) by adapting its definition to the specific conditions of the area and approaching it from a risk-management perspective. Among the different types of compound events (Zscheischler et al. 2020), our focus lies on multivariate compound events, where two or more hazards coincide simultaneously at the same location. The first aspect influencing the definition of the event is the interpretation of “same location” (Bevacqua et al. 2019). However, we adopt the methodology introduced by Sanuy et al (2021), wherein the study area is divided into catchment basins along the coastal zone. The hazard at the “land point” is characterized by the peak daily rainfall (P24h) recorded at any location within the basin during the rainstorm. This approach is adopted because of the dominance of heavy rainfall episodes in relatively small catchments to control the terrestrial component of the event. For the corresponding marine hazard, wave storms recorded at a point along the coastal fringe of the basin are selected.
Year: 2024