Flood mapping: predicting unpredictable

The climate model does not directly provide flood depth and the timing of flood events. River flood is reconstructed using river runoff from the dynamic climate model, and also the cumulative precipitation. Flood extent and flood depth data is first assessed in 100-meter resolution, using the Digital Elevation Model (Earth geometry with slopes and altitudes). Further these high resolution flood maps are aggregated over 10km x 10km pixels. 

The calculated probabilities of flood indicate how a 100-year event is expected to change towards the future, based on multi-model river discharge time series. 

The river discharge assessment is based on dynamical flood modeling. A limitation of dynamical flood modeling is that it doesn't model the upper parts of the river catchment area, where rivers originate. Hence, we also added a complementary “area at risk” data product but calculated using the 'flood susceptibility maps' which do cover those areas. This can be seen as the maximum ever flooded area.