social dynamics

Understanding social response dynamics to better predict high impact weather events: Lessons from post-flood behavioural surveys

Social scientists have a long history of documenting disasters and natural extreme events’ behavioural response through the collection of perishable post-event data (Gruntfest 1977; Quarantelli and Dynes, 1977; Stalling, 1987; Quarantelli, 1997, …

Towards integrated forecasting of flash floods human impacts

Floods are one of the most frequently occurring weather related disasters, which affected more than 2.3 billion people worldwide and caused the highest amount of financial losses ($662 billion) over the last two decades (CRED and UNISDR, 2015). Flash floods have rapid onset which provides only few hours between rainfall and flooding and hence short time for warning which leads to the majority of flood casualties around the world. Flash floods are usually very localized in time and space, they occur suddenly and are difficult to forecast with accuracy which can leave people without warning.