Floods in the European Union and the Middle East and North Africa region: Socio-economic impacts, characteristics, and public perception

Abstract. Floods are the most common natural disaster type worldwide, causing devastating socio-economic impacts. While much research has been conducted on flood impacts in the Global North, less is known about how these impacts vary across regions with different climatic and socio-economic conditions. Moreover, little is known about how measured impacts compare with public perception of flood risk, which is relevant for how populations respond to flood risk management measures. This study has two objectives: 1) to quantify and compare flood impacts within and between the European Union (EU) and the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) using the Emergency Events Database EM-DAT for 2000–2023 and 2) to compare the recorded impacts with public perception of flood risk within the EU based on the SP547 Eurobarometer survey. We find that more floods were recorded in the EU than in the MENA, causing double the economic losses relative to GDP. However, the numbers of fatalities and people affected by flooding were nearly four times larger in the MENA than in the EU. The seasonality of floods and their impacts showed a greater prevalence in central and eastern Europe during summer, in the western Mediterranean during autumn, and in the eastern Mediterranean and Middle East during autumn, winter and spring. Comparing recorded impacts with public risk perception showed that flood risk is overestimated by the population of northern EU countries and underestimated in the southern EU. Our results highlight the need for improved flood impact and perception data to facilitate flood research, especially in the MENA region, where data availability is limited but communities are disproportionately affected by flood disasters.