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The global impacts of river floods are substantial and rising. Effective adaptation to the increasing risks requires an in-depth understanding of the physical and socioeconomic drivers of risk. Whereas the modeling of flood hazard and exposure has improved greatly, compelling evidence on spatiotemporal patterns in vulnerability of societies around the world is still lacking. Due to this knowledge gap, the effects of vulnerability on global flood risk are not fully understood, and future projections of fatalities and losses available today are based on simplistic assumptions or do not include vulnerability. We show for the first time (to our knowledge) that trends and fluctuations in vulnerability to river floods around the world can be estimated by dynamic high-resolution modeling of flood hazard and exposure. We find that rising per-capita income coincided with a global decline in vulnerability between 1980 and 2010, which is reflected in decreasing mortality and losses as a share of the people and gross domestic product exposed to inundation. The results also demonstrate that vulnerability levels in low- and high-income countries have been converging, due to a relatively strong trend of vulnerability reduction in developing countries. Finally, we present projections of flood losses and fatalities under 100 individual scenario and model combinations, and three possible global vulnerability scenarios. The projections emphasize that materialized flood risk largely results from human behavior and that future risk increases can be largely contained using effective disaster risk reduction strategies.
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Disastrous floods have caused millions of fatalities in the twentieth century, tens of billions of dollars of direct economic loss each year and serious disruption to global trade. In this Review, we provide a synthesis of the atmospheric, land surface and socio-economic processes that produce river floods with disastrous consequences. Disastrous floods have often been caused by processes fundamentally different from those of non-disastrous floods, such as unusual but recurring atmospheric circulation patterns or failures of flood defences, which lead to high levels of damage because they are unexpected both by citizens and by flood managers. Past trends in economic flood impacts show widespread increases, mostly driven by economic and population growth. However, the number of fatalities and people affected has decreased since the mid-1990s because of risk reduction measures, such as improved risk awareness and structural flood defences. Disastrous flooding is projected to increase in many regions, particularly in Asia and Africa, owing to climate and socio-economic changes, although substantial uncertainties remain. Assessing the risk of disastrous river floods requires a deeper understanding of their distinct causes. Transdisciplinary research is needed to understand the potential for surprise in flood risk systems better and to operationalize risk management concepts that account for limited knowledge and unexpected developments. River floods have direct and indirect consequences for society, and can cause fatalities, displacement and economic loss. This Review examines the physical and socioeconomic causes and impacts of disastrous river flooding, and past and projected trends in their occurrence.