Proactive risk management needed to limit impacts of extreme floods and droughts

Floods and droughts are increasing in many parts of the world and causing serious damage. A new study shows that tailoring risk management measures to the worst flood or drought to date is not enough to mitigate the effects of unprecedented events. Dr. Michelle van Vliet participated in It is very difficult to minimize the impact of extreme events when no such natural disaster has ever occurred in the same area before, according to the research led by the German Research Center for Geosciences (GFZ). First, current infrastructure including dams and reservoirs are designed for a maximum limit, and once that threshold is exceeded, they become ineffective. Second, risk management is mostly reactively implemented or modified after major floods and droughts, while proactive, anticipatory strategies are still rare. This is partly due to a cognitive bias related to the previous rarity of such extreme events, as well as to the nature of human risk perception. The study was a large-scale international collaboration by researchers from the International Association of Hydrological Sciences (IAHS).