the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.
| 02 Apr 2026
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.
- Preprint
(11079 KB) - Metadata XML
- BibTeX
- EndNote
Status: open (until 23 May 2026)
- RC1: 'Comment on egusphere-2026-1827', Ammar Abd Jasim, 03 May 2026 reply
-
RC2: 'Comment on egusphere-2026-1827', Bernard Twaróg, 03 May 2026
reply
A key strength of the study is the integration of approaches from the social and natural sciences. Combining data on the actual impacts of floods with an analysis of public risk perception represents a valuable research direction that is still relatively rare in the literature. Another advantage is the broad temporal and spatial scope of the analysis. The use of data covering 24 years (2000–2023) and multiple countries makes it possible to capture general trends and enhances the representativeness of the results. The multidimensional analysis of flood impacts is also noteworthy. Considering three indicators — fatalities, the number of affected people, and economic losses — provides a much more comprehensive picture than relying on a single metric. Additionally, the analysis of seasonality and flood types adds important physical context and helps link climatic conditions with flood risk. The study convincingly highlights global inequalities, showing that a higher number of flood events does not necessarily translate into greater losses, and that less economically developed regions tend to experience relatively higher human losses.
At the same time, a certain inconsistency is visible between the frequency of floods and their impacts. The authors do not provide a fully coherent explanation for this phenomenon — in different parts of the study they refer either to socio-economic factors or to climatic conditions, but they do not attempt to model these factors jointly. The lack of causal analysis limits the interpretation of the results.
The conclusion that riverine floods dominate is questionable, as it is based on data with incomplete classification — a substantial proportion of events are labeled as “unspecified.” This weakens the reliability of that conclusion.
Moreover, the study does not always clearly distinguish between correlation and causation. For example, the relationship between higher GDP and greater economic losses is interpreted without fully acknowledging that it primarily reflects greater economic exposure rather than necessarily higher risk.
A significant issue is the treatment of missing data. The analysis assumes that missing values indicate no impacts, which may lead to systematic underestimation of losses, particularly in the MENA region. Another limitation is the use of rankings to compare public perception with actual impacts. While this simplifies the analysis, it ignores the magnitude of differences between categories. The comparison of data is also asymmetrical — for EU countries, both quantitative and perception data are available, whereas for the MENA region only quantitative data are used. This limits the ability to make fully consistent comparisons between regions.
Reliance on a single data source (EM-DAT) is also problematic. This database has known limitations, including underreporting of events, a bias toward better data coverage in developed countries, and substantial gaps in economic loss data (particularly in the MENA region, where they can reach up to 75%). Furthermore, aggregating data at the level of two broad regions (EU and MENA) obscures important internal differences and introduces significant heterogeneity within the analyzed areas.
Finally, the study is primarily descriptive in nature. It lacks more advanced statistical analysis, such as regression models, causal inference approaches, or significance testing, which could provide a deeper understanding of the observed relationships.
Overall, the study represents a valuable comparative analysis and offers a broad overview of flood-related issues across different regions of the world. Its main strengths lie in the scope of the data and the attempt to integrate different research approaches. However, methodological limitations — particularly those related to data quality, simplified analytical methods, and the absence of a causal framework — mean that some conclusions should be interpreted with caution.
Citation: https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-2026-1827-RC2
Viewed
| HTML | XML | Total | BibTeX | EndNote | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 214 | 194 | 14 | 422 | 12 | 17 |
- HTML: 214
- PDF: 194
- XML: 14
- Total: 422
- BibTeX: 12
- EndNote: 17
Viewed (geographical distribution)
| Country | # | Views | % |
|---|
| Total: | 0 |
| HTML: | 0 |
| PDF: | 0 |
| XML: | 0 |
- 1
Upon careful review, the article (Floods in the European Union and the Middle East and North Africa region: Socio-economic impacts, characteristics, and public perception) makes valuable contributions to the field of disaster research, particularly concerning flood risks. This study primarily highlights a comparison of flood impacts between two regions that are entirely different in terms of their social, climatic, and economic characteristics, while examining the recorded effects of disasters alongside people’s perceptions. Despite the limitations outlined by the authors, such studies can contribute to supporting risk management strategies and mitigating their impacts. However, some observations could improve the article.