Research Water and Climate Risk

The main aim of the TiPES project at IVM is to quantify tipping points, early warning signals and (compound) meteorological extremes over the Mediterranean basin. In addition, physical mechanisms driving such changes will be explored, by providing insights into both thermodynamic (e.g. temperature increase) and dynamic (e.g. changes in weather patterns, Hadley-cell expansion, northward shift of storm tracks) processes.

The project LAMACLIMA – LAnd MAnagement for CLImate Mitigation and Adaptation – investigates how changes in land cover and land management can help to meet the mitigation and adaptation objectives of the Paris Agreement, as well as the Sustainable Development Goals. The findings will be disseminated through a number of tools, events and products. By closely involving stakeholders and policy-makers, we aim to support sustainable land use decision-making. We will quantify the impacts of large-scale land management (e.g global reforestation, deforestation, irrigation and wood harvest) on climate, agriculture, biodiversity and economic productivity. At IVM we focus on the changes on the large-scale atmospheric circulation using state of the art global climate models. We will explore the impacts of land management on both climatic mean states and extremes and teleconnections patterns that might affect geographically distant key regions including the world’s breadbaskets.

Contact information: Prof. Dim Coumou and Dr Iris Manola.

For more information please visit the following websites: https://climateanalytics.org/projects/lamaclima/ and http://www.jpi-climate.eu/AXIS/Activities/LAMACLIMA

We study sea levels and sea level extremes during warm climates: in the Last Interglacial (125,000 years ago) and in the future. We want to exploit the knowledge of the past to understand what the future can bring, in terms of changes in relative sea level, storm surges and tides. Then, with this knowledge, we calculate the implications of high-end changes in these climate variables for coastal flood risk and adaptation and disaster risk reduction. For this, we employ a multidisciplinary set of modelling tools: climate modelling, solid earth modelling, sea level modelling, hydrodynamic modelling, coastal inundation modelling and risk modelling.

Contact information: Dr Paolo Scussolini.

Summer extremes are particularly devastating when they persist for several days: Many consecutive hot-and-dry days causing harvest failure, or stagnating wet extremes causing flooding. Despite this importance, persistence of extreme summer weather has largely been neglected by the climate science community. 

Each year Europe is subject to drought, heatwaves and periods of persistent rainfall that could lead to the flooding of rivers. Although short-range weather forecasts have improved substantially over the last decennia, long-range weather forecasts have improved less. The goal of this project is to improve these long-term probabilistic forecasts of extreme weather. Warnings can then be given earlier and more reliably. Long meteorological datasets and newly developed statistical post-processing methods enable us to better integrate the relevant information, and correct shortcomings of operational ensemble prediction systems.

Contact information: Chiem van Straaten, Prof. Dim Coumou, Prof. Bart van den Hurk.

For more information, please visit the following websites: https://www.knmi.nl/research/weather-climate-models and https://www.ecmwf.int/en/forecasts/documentation-and-support/extended-range-forecasts/justification-ENS-extended

Publication
van Straaten, C., Whan, K., Coumou, D., van den Hurk, B., Schmeits, M. (2020). The influence of aggregation and statistical post-processing on the sub-seasonal predictability of European temperatures. Quarterly Journal of the Royal Meteorological Society, 46, 731, 2654–2670. doi: 10.1002/qj.3810

In an interconnected world, Europe’s economy will be increasingly affected by climate change impacts that occur beyond its border. The movement of goods and services, people and capital occurs at ever increasing rates and volumes. This complex network reveals Europe’s globalized climate exposure, vulnerability and risk structure, through which both gradual and sudden impacts of climatic features at any location on the world (hurricanes, droughts, melting ice sheets) propagate, ultimately impacting Europe’s socio-economic welfare.

This is the first focus dedicated to global hydroclimate, hydrology and flooding of the Last Interglacial period, a past climate with partial analogy to possible warmer futures. For this period, we use models and geological proxies to study its patterns of precipitation, (peak) river discharge, and flooding. This serves both to test the performance of climate models and to offer an global picture of hydroclimate and hydrology in a regionally warmer world.

This study was conducted in collaboration with Earth and Climate Cluster, Faculty of Science, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam.

Contact information: Dr Paolo Scussolini, Prof. Jeroen Aerts, Prof. Philip Ward and Prof. Dim Coumou.

For more information, please visit the site https://www.researchgate.net/project/Last-Interglacial-Floods

Food production in Kenya depends heavily on smallholder rain-fed agriculture; but farm households are challenged to match the erratic rainfall with crop water requirements. Increasing climate variability and changing socio-economic conditions are exacerbating the frequency and intensity of droughts and aggravate local food insecurity. Integrated water resources management and risk-informed disaster risk reduction strategies are key to ensure sustainable development in this country.

Recently, the disaster risk field has made substantial steps forward to develop increasingly comprehensive risk assessments, accounting for the incidence of multiple hazards, trickle-down effects of cascading disasters and/or impacts, and spatiotemporal dynamics. While the COVID-19 outbreak increased general awareness of the challenges that arise when disasters from natural hazards and diseases collide, we still lack a proper understanding of the role of disease outbreaks in disaster risk assessments and management. Therefore, this ground-breaking research project sets out to increase our understanding of the interactions between consecutive disasters and disease outbreaks (CD-to-DOs). Recent developments in multivariate-statistical methods and the increasing availability of disaster, disease, and socioeconomic data enable the opportunity to take a large and much needed step forward in assessing the global, continuous probability of CD-to-DOs. Multivariate-statistical methods will be used to model the dependence structure between disaster impacts and disease outbreaks, while accounting for the role of temporal vulnerability dynamics. The proposed research combines the researcher's expertise in modelling global consecutive risk and temporal dynamics of vulnerability. An improved understanding of CD-to-DOs is not only crucial for scientists aiming to improve risk modelling capabilities, but also for decision-makers and practitioners to anticipate and respond to the increasing complexity of disaster risk.

This study is conducted in collaboration with Red Cross 510.

Contact person: Dr Marleen de Ruiter

See also https://vu.nl/en/news/2023/marleen-de-ruiter-receives-veni-for-research-on-post-disaster-disease-outbreaks

Hydrological extremes are expected to occur more frequently and become more severe, making drought and flood risk management essential for adaptation. The GroundedExtremes project (“Understanding and governing groundwater to reduce risk of hydrological extremes”) aims to investigate groundwater and hydrological extremes and design improved groundwater management as a powerful adaptation strategy to both droughts and floods, avoiding long-term unintended consequences and unwanted trade-offs. Groundwater hydrological behaviour and adaptation strategies are explored in four regions located in Sweden, the Netherlands, Belgium and Spain. These case studies represent different physical, societal and water governance contexts. At IVM we focus on system dynamics modelling and applying behavioural and social aspects to hydrological system modelling.

Funding organisations are: NWO (Netherlands), FORMAS (Sweden), FWO (Belgium), AEI (Spain) and RCN (Norway).

The study is conducted in collaboration with Vrije Universiteit Brussel (Belgium), Wageningen University & Research (Netherlands), Universidad Complutense de Madrid (Spain), University of Oslo (Norway), University of Gothenburg (Sweden), KWR Water Research Institute (Netherlands), Universidad de Sevilla (Spain) and Chalmers University of Technology (Sweden).

Contact person: Dr Anne van Loon

Future climate projections show a strengthening of the hydrological cycle with more droughts and floods expected. This means a higher likelihood of cascading drought-to-flood disasters. Recent examples are the Millennium Drought – Brisbane flooding in Australia, the California drought – Oroville spillway collapse in the US, or the 2017-18 drought in East Africa followed by floods that resulted in hundreds of deaths. These events resulted in large economic losses, casualties and displacements. 

The European Space Agency’s (ESA) EO4Multihazards (High-Impact Multi-Hazards Science) is a two-year project launched as part of the joint ESA-European Commission Earth System Science Initiative in September 2023. At the core of EO4Multihazards lies a joint effort to leverage the capabilities of satellite Earth Observation (EO) technology, such as including the Copernicus Sentinel series, the ESA’s Earth Explorers, and the meteorological missions, for the analysis of multi-hazard events. The objective is to better understand the intricacies of high-impact cascading and compounding multi-hazard events, unraveling their underlying drivers and dynamics, and enhancing our ability to assess their societal and ecological impacts. The project encompasses the development of four distinct science cases, targeting both compound and cascading events. These science cases will serve as the foundation for corresponding demonstration cases, all with the shared objective of translating our scientific advancements into actionable insights. These outcomes are an integral part of a community tool designed to facilitate collaborative research and future scientific progress.

This study was conducted in collaboration with GMV, BGS, CMCC, EURAC, UT-ITC and UCL.

Contact information: Dr Nicole van Maanen, Dr Marleen de Ruiter and Prof. Philip Ward

For more information, please visit the site https://eo4multihazards.gmv.com

Multi-hazard and sYstemic framework for enhancing Risk-Informed mAnagement and Decision-making in the EU

Natural hazards have caused ~100,000 fatalities and over €100 billion in economic losses in the EU since 2000. The last decade saw huge scientific advances in understanding natural hazard risks, and within the EU there has been a shift in practice from managing hazards to managing risks. Nevertheless, most research and policy still address risk from a single hazard, single sector, perspective. This presents obstacles for addressing real-world challenges faced by risk managers and other decision-makers. A paradigm shift is needed to successfully address these kinds of complex questions and challenges, in which science and practice move from a single hazard, single sector, risk perspective towards a multi-risk, multi-sector, systemic approach.

In recent decades, a striking number of countries have suffered from consecutive disasters: events whose impacts overlap both spatially and temporally, while recovery is still under way. The risk of consecutive disasters will increase due to growing exposure, the interconnectedness of human society and the increased frequency and intensity of non-tectonic hazard. While a large body of literature addresses multi-risk based on the spatial overlap between the exposure of different hazard types faced by one particular area, the temporal aspect of sequential hazards has been studied to a much lesser extent.

STORM (Synthetic Tropical cyclone generation Model) is designed to statistically extend any meteorological dataset to 10,000 years of tropical cyclone activity under the same climate conditions.

Coastal flooding due to tropical cyclones causes damages up to hundreds of billions of euros per event. The aim of the MOdelling Sea level And Inundation for Cyclones (MOSAIC) project is developing and validating a computationally efficient, scalable, framework for large-scale flood risk assessment.

We will simulate extreme sea levels for thousands of synthetic tropical cyclones – using goal programming as a tool to reduce the computational costs and combine multiple tropical cyclones into one simulation. We will simulate flood inundation at high resolution by nesting local models within a global model – by coupling our models with the OMUSE software which allows for a multi-scale modelling approach. The novel framework is an important step towards improved global assessments of flood risk.

This study is conducted in collaboration with Netherlands eScience Center and Deltares.

Contact information: Dr Sanne Muis, Prof. Philip Ward and Job Dullaart.

Technical and scientific support to the European Drought Observatory (EDO) for Resilience and Adaptation – Development and implementation of a drought impact database, a drought risk assessment methodology and a drought risk atlas.

There is nowadays a wealth of information about how droughts affect the hydrological cycle, but the complexity of their impacts on the environment and on society makes it difficult to develop holistic tools that allow decision-makers to have at hand information on how droughts will affect the various  systems (such as human health, aquatic ecosystems or the agricultural sector) concerned. So far, data on drought impacts have mostly been used for research, i.e. to understand events or to find best-linkages to hazard indices that can be monitored. The result of such research shows that indices monitored to capture impacts have to be region and sector specific.

Water- and climate-related risks and developments show large differences between regions. The most significant challenges are projected for large portions of the developing world. However, the developed world also needs to adapt. Cities, infrastructure, and operations of many sectors are still based on the climate regime of the past. Global coherent adaptation pathways are still lacking. Creating them is an essential, first step towards sustainable and climate-resilient development. To address this, the Planbureau voor de Leefomgeving created that Future Water Challenges 2 (FWC2) project. This project aims to model these pathways forward. The IVM is leading the global flood risk modelling portion of FWC2. Using the revolutionary GLOFRIS framework, project members within IVM are tasked with quantifying the benefits and costs of disaster risk reduction strategies (e.g., structural barriers, nature-based solutions, managed retreat). These strategies are modelled against both existing and projected coastal and riverine flood risk. With these results, the IVM and project partners will lead the global charge to reduce the negative impacts of climate change on all segments of society.

This study is conducted in collaboration with PBL, Deltares and Utrecht University.

Contact information: Eric Mortensen and  Prof. Philip Ward. 

In the Water Safe Cities project, we provide 97 cities globally with an overview of flood and drought risk and corresponding expected annual damages. Cities require this information because they are taking increasingly more prominent roles in combating disaster risk, and because they are especially susceptible to disaster related damages due to their high levels of exposure. 

We focus on five hydrological hazards (pluvial, fluvial and coastal flooding & agricultural and hydrological drought) on both current as well as future (2050) timescales. Results are disseminated towards cities in a story map to create awareness and to steer them in the right direction for adaptation. This research is an initial step in better representing urban regions in global scale disaster models, which is needed to enable comparison between cities and identification of similar cities in terms of risk profiles and potential adaptation strategies.

This study is conducted in collaboration with Climate Adaptation Services (CAS) and C40-Cities. 

Contact information: Tristian Stolte, Dr Hans de Moel, Prof. Philip Ward.

Humanitarian crises often result from a combination of multiple physical and societal, rather than individual processes. In these situations, the combination of processes leads to ‘compound events’, which socio-economic impacts could be larger than those forecasted by analysing each event individually.  In recent years, the Horn of Africa has been increasingly exposed to compound events. Frequent extreme dry and wet conditions often compound with its fragile context characterized by internal ethnic conflicts, unstable governments, and high levels of poverty, resulting in impacts usually larger than expected. An improved understanding of the drivers and their interactions can help to reduce future risks associated to compound events. 

While wildfires in the Netherlands do not compare to the disruptive events in Australia, they do pose an increasing risk to nature and society due to an increased risk of droughts. This was illustrated in 2018, one of the driest years since 1976, which showed a threefold increase of forest fire alarms compared to an average year.

In this project we assess: (1) the linkages between drought risk and wildfire risk in the Netherlands and (2) the socio-economic impacts of wildfires in the Netherlands.

This study was conducted in collaboration with VU Earth Sciences, Instituut Fysieke Veiligheid and Vandersat.

Contact information: Dr Marleen de Ruiter and Dr Toon Haer.

Flooding in deltas and estuaries is driven by the interactions of oceanographic, hydrological, and meteorological phenomena such as extreme rainfall, river discharge, storm surge, and wave action. When these co-occur in space and time, they can exacerbate the flood extent, depth, and duration locally, resulting in a so-called compound flood event.

Connect4WR explores the links between water resources and communities in four countries of the Limpopo Basin in southern Africa – Botswana, Mozambique, South Africa and Zimbabwe. The Limpopo basin is an arid, water-stressed basin, which is also highly susceptible to floods. Intermittent floods and droughts worsen water availability and quality problems, and both types of events are predicted to increase in frequency and magnitude with global climate change.

In this project we aim, together with partners at KNMI, CGI and Reading University, at developing a near real-time operational system to estimate losses from storm systems hitting Europe. Funded by the European Center for Medium Range Weather Forecast (ECMWF), this project develops new climate services for the insurance and energy sector in Europe. It will become part of the Copernicus Climate Change Service implemented by ECMWF.

First, for individual storms the near-surface wind speed footprint is calculated (i.e. the Hazard). The infrastructure's exposure, based on OpenStreetMap, and vulnerability then, together with the storm's footprint determine the total estimated losses.

Contact information: Prof. Dim Coumou and Dr Toon Haer.

For more information, please visit the site https://climate.copernicus.eu/

The project's goal is to develop new methodologies to monitor our oceans’ health on a global scale. Satellite sensors such as NASA’s SeaWiFs and MERIS and the more recent OLCI sensor onboard ESA’s Sentinel-3 satellite have opened up the possibility to get a birds-eye view of our oceans and track changes over decadal scales. The research revolves around the development of new methods to invert multi- and hyperspectral data that is acquired by ocean colour satellites. With our new inversion scheme, we are able to estimate water quality parameters such as the concentration of different phytoplankton groups, dissolved and particulate matter in the world’s oceans. In this manner we hope to get a better understanding of the biological and chemical evolution of our oceans.

This study was conducted in collaboration with the University of Amsterdam.

Contact information: Dr Hans van der Woerd.

For more information visit the site gitlab.com/tadzio/

The project's goal is to develop new methodologies to monitor our oceans’ health on a global scale. Satellite sensors such as NASA’s SeaWiFs and MERIS and the more recent OLCI sensor onboard ESA’s Sentinel-3 satellite have opened up the possibility to get a birds-eye view of our oceans and track changes over decadal scales. The research revolves around the development of new methods to invert multi- and hyperspectral data that is acquired by ocean colour satellites. With our new inversion scheme, we are able to estimate water quality parameters such as the concentration of different phytoplankton groups, dissolved and particulate matter in the world’s oceans. In this manner we hope to get a better understanding of the biological and chemical evolution of our oceans.

This study was conducted in collaboration with the University of Amsterdam.

Contact information: Dr Hans van der Woerd.

For more information visit the site gitlab.com/tadzio/

Within the EIT Climate-KIC programme ‘One Million near-zero energy homes in 2023’ the Institute for Enviromental Studies cooperates with Achmea (one of the largest insurers in the Netherlands) and the KNMI (Royal Netherlands Meteorological Institute) to investigate hail risks.

Background
Extreme hailstorms are associated with very warm (convective) weather conditions and can cause a lot of damage in very little time. In fact, the largest ever insured disaster in the Netherlands is a recent hailstorm (July 2016 in the province of Brabant) which costed about €600 million, and in Germany five large hailstorm resulted in €2500 million damage in 2013.

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