Flood hazards, social vulnerability and societal risks in Russia

A disaster community's priority is to ensure the safety of populations during natural hazards. Disaster risk reduction strategies require knowledge of what is hazardous, who is vulnerable, and what is risky. As of now, engineering methods predominate in Russian disaster research, while social science rarely analyzes floods, earthquakes, wildfires, etc. Study aims to test the applicability of new methods for delineating flood hazards, characterizing social vulnerability, and determining overall societal risk in Russia. Multidisciplinary nature makes the problem complex. The research will concentrate on the ten representative counties of the Kuban River basin in a southern Russian region, where at the beginning of the XXI century catastrophic floods led to enormous fatalities and huge economic damage. Flood hazards are assessed based on the county-scale spatial distribution of records produced by a Regional Early Warning System, impact information, and flood management infrastructure. Social vulnerability is investigated using a County Comparable Social Vulnerability Profiling model that encompasses three pillars (physical, socio-economic and awareness), nine themes (age, disability, poverty, etc.), and seventeen census variables (aged 0–19 years, density, one-person household in detached housing, only nine years of school, etc.). Finally, a holistic flood risk map is compiled. The results show that the three riskiest counties require measures to reduce flood hazard and social vulnerability in all phases of disaster risk management (mitigation, preparation, emergency, and rehabilitation). Data-poor nations such as Russia can benefit from these methods, but their use is limited by insufficient flood hazard and census information.