Assessing the Impact of Seasonal Population Fluctuation on Regional Flood Risk Management

Human populations are not static or uniformly distributed across space and time. This consideration has a notable impact on natural hazard analyses which seek to determine population exposure and risk. This paper focuses on the coupling of population and environmental models to address the effect of seasonally varying populations on exposure to flood risk. A spatiotemporal population modelling tool, SurfaceBuilder247, has been combined with LISFLOOD-FP flood inundation model outputs for a study area centred on the coastal resort town of St Austell, Cornwall, United Kingdom (UK). Results indicate strong seasonal cycles in populations and their exposure to flood hazard which are not accounted for in traditional population datasets and flood hazard assessments. Therefore, this paper identifies and demonstrates considerable enhancements to the current handling of spatiotemporal population variation within hazard exposure assessment and disaster risk management.