A flood mortality index in the Mediterranean basin

Collecting and studying the mortality during flood events came up as a relevant issue on the last ten years: i) to assess the impacts of floods, ii) to assess prevention policies and iii) to improve prevention measures. The building of the MEditerranean Flood Fatalities (MEFF) database has been a first step to address flood related mortality in the Mediterranean basin. Data on the circumstances of death during flood events and the profile of dead people has been collected and put together for five Mediterranean regions: Catalonia (Spain), Balearic Islands (Spain), southern France, Greece, Calabria (Italy). The period covered goes from 1980 to 2015. Till now, a first step to explore the interest of the database has been the analysis of raw data to show the general features of flood related mortality. But the raw data show strong discrepancies between regions/countries and periods regarding the number of fatalities and the profile of dead people. To go further, this presentation proposes to build a flood mortality index that can express mortality in relative terms. Flood related fatalities are linked to people at risk and a mortality index is calculated per million of exposed people. This Index might allow comparing the "weight" of flood related mortality through periods and between regions. Further exploration is tested to integrate hazard data (rainfall or discharge e.g. in terms of return period) as an explanatory variable of flood mortality.