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Advancing human displacement modelling: A case study of the 2022 summer floods in Pakistan
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  • Pui Man Kam,
  • Tabea Cache,
  • Bianca Biess,
  • Steffen Lohrey,
  • Sabrina di Vincenzo,
  • Jamie W. McCaughey,
  • Radley Horton,
  • Lisa Thalheimer
Pui Man Kam
Institute for Environmental Decisions, ETH Zurich

Corresponding Author:[email protected]

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Tabea Cache
Universite de Lausanne
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Bianca Biess
Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich
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Steffen Lohrey
Unknown
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Sabrina di Vincenzo
Independent Researcher
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Jamie W. McCaughey
Institute for Environmental Decisions, ETH Zurich
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Radley Horton
Center for Climate Systems Research, Columbia University
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Lisa Thalheimer
Oxford University
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Abstract

The devastating 2022 summer flood in Pakistan displaced about 7 million people in the Sindh province alone. Up to one third of the country’s area, mostly the country’s south, was flooded. Effective response to intensifying and compounding climate change hazards requires impact assessments to include socio-economic components, as well as uncertainties arising from the dynamic interactions between impacts. Such quantitative evidence largely remains limited and fragmented, due to methodological challenges and data limitations. Using the open-source impact assessment platform CLIMADA, we study to what extent flood-related hazards can be used to quantify displacement outcomes in a data-limited region. Using flood depths, exposed population, and impact functions, we link flood vulnerability to displaced people. This allows us to estimate internal displacement resulting from the flood event, and to further assess how displacement varies across different areas. We find that a flood depth threshold of 0.67m (CI 0.35 - 1.10) provides a best fit to all data from Sindh province. We find a negative correlation between displacement and the degree of urbanisation. By testing the performance of our model in explaining differing displacement estimates reported across Pakistan, we show the limitations of existing impact assessment frameworks. We emphasise the importance of estimating potential displacement alongside other impacts to better characterise, communicate, and ultimately respond to the impacts of floods.
01 Oct 2024Submitted to ESS Open Archive
03 Oct 2024Published in ESS Open Archive