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Flood Occurrence and Impact Models for Socioeconomic Applications over Canada and the United States
  • +2
  • Manuel Grenier,
  • Mathieu Boudreault,
  • David A. Carozza,
  • Jérémie Boudreault,
  • Sébastien Raymond
Manuel Grenier
The Co-operators General Insurance Company
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Mathieu Boudreault
Université du Québec à Montréal

Corresponding Author:[email protected]

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David A. Carozza
Université du Québec à Montréal
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Jérémie Boudreault
Institut national de la recherche scientifique
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Sébastien Raymond
The Co-operators General Insurance Company
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Abstract

Large-scale socioeconomic studies of the impacts of floods are difficult and costly for countries such as Canada and the United States due to the large number of rivers and size of watersheds. Such studies are however very important to analyze spatial patterns and temporal trends to inform large-scale flood risk management decisions and policies. In this paper, we present different flood occurrence and impact models based upon statistical and machine learning methods over 31,000 watersheds spread across Canada and the US. The models can be quickly calibrated and thereby easily run predictions over thousands of scenarios in a matter of minutes. As applications of the models, we present the geographical distribution of the modelled average annual number of people displaced due to flooding in Canada and the US, as well as various scenario analyses. We find for example that an increase of 10% in average precipitation yields an increase of population displaced of 18% in Canada and 14% in the U.S. The model can therefore be used by a broad range of end-users ranging from climate scientists to economists who seek to translate climate and socioeconomic scenarios into flood probabilities and impacts measured in terms of population displaced.
13 Dec 2023Submitted to ESS Open Archive
14 Dec 2023Published in ESS Open Archive