In early 2023, CIMA Research Foundation began consulting with World Bank (WB) on a flood and drought risk profile for Cambodia. The risk profile will then be used by WB for the Country Climate and Development Report, a document that aims to identify the main actions needed to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and climate-related vulnerabilities of different countries.
How does the project work?
Risk will be calculated through a probabilistic approach, assessing both events with low probability and high impact and events with high probability and low impact. Flood scenarios will be developed through a modeling chain consisting of climate, hydrological, and hydraulic models; in particular, the Continuum hydrological model developed by CIMA Research Foundation will be implemented to assess possible flood events under current and future climate conditions at the national level. The modeling chain will also be integrated with locally collected information on precipitation, temperature, humidity, wind, and solar radiation. Local data will be integrated with global-scale data to characterize exposures, and vulnerability curves will be used.
The probabilistic flood risk assessment will provide indication of the population potentially affected, damage on the built environment and services (roads, schools, and health centers), and restoration costs. The results will consider current climate conditions and their future predictions based on the effects of climate change and socioeconomic projections. The modeling chain will also be used to assess the potential effects of flood risk adaptation measures.
What are the expected results?
- Flood hazard map in the current climate condition and future predictions based on the effects of climate change
- Exposure determination and characterization of the vulnerability in the present and in the future, through socioeconomic projections
- Evaluation of mitigation options
- Elaboration of the Cambodia risk profile for Cambodia, in terms of AAL and PML for the identification of the population potentially affected, the facilities affected (roads, schools, health centers) and the Built-up damage and replacement cost
What does CIMA Research Foundation do?
In order to produce the risk profile for floods and droughts, we are tasked with analyzing data provided by the World Bank, and then integrating hydrological and hydraulic modeling to define sets of possible flood event scenarios at the national level, under different climate change conditions. To this must be added the modeling of national exposure and vulnerability, starting from the public datasets and those made available by WB. The information thus obtained will be used to develop a risk profile for floods and droughts.
