VULNERABILITY.
Vulnerability refers to the propensity of exposed elements (such as human beings, their livelihoods and assets) to suffer adverse effects when impacted by hazard events. Refers to the inventory (and values) of elements that are present in areas in which hazardous events (floods in our case) may occur and can be adversely affected (potentially damaged or disrupted) by those events. These values depend on the presence of people, livelihoods, species or ecosystems, environmental services and resources, infrastructure, or economic, social, cultural assets in places that could be adversely affected (IPCC, 2013). On the other hand, susceptibility (or sensitivity) is the degree to which the system is affected, depending on the own intrinsic characteristics of its exposed elements within the area in which hazardous events may occur, while the adaptive capacity of a system is its ability to endure any perturbation, like floods maintaining significant levels of efficiency in its social, economic, environmental and physical component.
BARCELONA RESEARCH SITES
In the case study of Barcelona, a comprehensive multi-risk assessment was performed concerning several sectors and risk targets exposed to urban flooding. Risk assessment in Barcelona considered direct and indirect damage, as such as, tangible and intangible damages. Direct damages were also represented through qualitative (for the intangible impacts) and quantitative (for tangible impacts) maps achieved by sectorial and integrated detailed and calibrated models.
In this web-portal, hazard, vulnerability and risk maps elaborated for current (Baseline) and future (Business as Usual or BAU and Adaptation) scenarios are presented. These flood maps related to pluvial and coastal flooding focused on the following potential impacts:
1 Risk for people (Stability of pedestrians and vehicles)
2 Economic damage related to properties
3 Economic damage related to vehicles
4 Surface traffic disruption
5 Waste containers stability
6 Flooding of coastal critical infrastructures and services
1. Risk for people (Stability of pedestrians and vehicles)
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Description of vulnerable elements.
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Residents are the ones at risk in this study. Different levels of vulnerability are established according to people’s exposure (people density) and their physical characteristics (sensitivity) taking into account indicators like % of people with critical age or % of foreign people. Moreover, the presence of vulnerable infrastructures such as schools, hospitals or elderly homes was also considered in the vulnerability assessment.
Also the stability of vehicles may compromise people’s safety, so traffic flow (exposure indicator) is analyzed to define vulnerability levels for each road.
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Data sources
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Population characteristics has been downloaded through the IDESCAT website https://www.idescat.cat/?lang=en. This information may be related to each census district of the city.
Traffic flow information was provided by the Barcelona City Council.
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Projection and reference system
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SGR ETRS 1989 UTM (31N)
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Scale of work or resolution
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Census districts (for people stability) and roads (for vehicle stability) within the city
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Relationships
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When a vulnerable infrastructure is located in a census district it contributes to increase the vulnerability of this specific census district.
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Functions / Tables
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The criteria adopted to establish vulnerability levels here is summarized in following figures for pedestrians and vehicles respectively.
 Figure 1 Vulnerability criteria for pedestrians exposed to flooding
Figure 2 Vulnerability criteria for vehicles exposed to flooding
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| Maps |
   You can consult it dynamically in the "Maps" section of the "Exposure" module.
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Maps description
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For human risk assessment related to people stability, the census districts of the district and their vulnerability levels of the city are presented. On the other hand, for the risk assessment related to vehicles stability, traffic flows for the roads within the municipality are presented too.
The vulnerability maps represent how vulnerable either pedestrians or vehicles may be when exposed to pluvial flooding in specific areas of the city, by establishing three qualitative levels: low, medium and high.
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Type
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Public
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License
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Free
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Data set (Raster/shp )
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Geo-referenced information obtained
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| Main participants |
Eduardo Martínez-Gomariz, Cetaqua, Water Technology Centre
Edwar Forero-Ortiz, Cetaqua, Water Technology Centre
Beniamino Russo, Aquatec, SUEZ Water Advanced Solutions
Luca Locatelli, Aquatec, SUEZ Water Advanced Solutions
Dani Yubero, Aquatec, SUEZ Water Advanced Solutions
Maria Guerrero-Hidalga, Cetaqua, Water Technology Centre
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2. Economic damage related to properties
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Description of vulnerable elements.
Vulnerability classes for all relevant element at risk types.
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Elements at risk are buildings, which have been proposed to be classified into 14 different types.
Moreover, 14 depth-damage curves have been tailored developed for Barcelona, based on previous reported pluvial flood damages and the expert opinion provided by an insurance surveyor.
See: Martínez-Gomariz, E., Forero-Ortiz, E., Guerrero-Hidalga, M., Castán, S., Gómez, M., 2020. Flood Depth‒Damage Curves for Spanish Urban Areas. Sustainability 12, 2666. https://doi.org/10.3390/su12072666
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Data sources
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The basis for this study is a shapefile and a database related. It has been freely downloaded from the Spanish Cadastral Service Website: https://www.sedecatastro.gob.es/
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Scale of work or resolution
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Building
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Functions / Tables
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Maps description
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The property uses presented here are the result of aggregating the uses employed by the Cadastre into the 14 classes proposed in this study.
Buildings vulnerability is not represented by a map but through their associated depth-damage curves which represent how vulnerable are them for a certain floodwater level.
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Projection and reference system
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SGR ETRS 1989 UTM (31N)
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Type
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Public
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License
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Free
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Data set (Raster/shp )
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Shapefile
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| Main participants |
Eduardo Martínez-Gomariz, Cetaqua, Water Technology Centre
Edwar Forero-Ortiz, Cetaqua, Water Technology Centre
Beniamino Russo, Aquatec, SUEZ Water Advanced Solutions
Luca Locatelli, Aquatec, SUEZ Water Advanced Solutions
Maria Guerrero-Hidalga, Cetaqua, Water Technology Centre
Dani Yubero, Aquatec, SUEZ Water Advanced Solutions
Salvador Castan, Agencia Pericial (Insurance Company) (AGPERICIAL)
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3. Economic damage related to vehicles
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Description of vulnerable elements.
Vulnerability classes for all relevant element at risk types.
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Elements at risk in this study are vehicles on the street.
The estimation of pluvial flood damages for vehicles has been undertaken following the methodology proposed in Martínez-Gomariz et al. (Martínez-Gomariz et al., 2019). This methodology considers the use of damage curves for different types of vehicles developed by the U.S Army Corps of Engineers (USACE, 2009) which has been transform into a unique curve (weighted curve) according to the amount of these different types of vehicles that are expected to be found in Barcelona. Different patterns of percentage of parked-vehicles occupancy have been proposed for Barcelona which, together with the damage curve and the water depths (Figure 1) related to each flood considered, let to estimate the damages for vehicles for a specific flood event. This methodology considers only outdoor parked vehicles as potentially damaged.
 Figure 1 Area of vehicles related to each cell of the hydrodynamic model
References:
Martínez-Gomariz, E., Gómez, M., Russo, B., Sánchez, P., Montes, J.-A., 2019. Methodology for the damage assessment of vehicles exposed to flooding in urban areas. Journal of Flood Risk Management. 12, e12475. https://doi.org/10.1111/jfr3.12475
U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (USACE), 2009. Economic Guidance Memorandum, 09-04, Generic Depth-Damage Relationships for Vehicles.
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Data sources
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Aerial photograph obtained from the Cartographic and Geological Institute of Catalonia (ICGC) https://www.icgc.cat/en/.
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Scale of work or resolution
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Barcelona city and 25-cm resolution.
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Functions / Tables, relationships
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Depth-damage curves developed by the US Army Corps of Engineers have been used for 5 types of vehicles. 
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Maps description
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There is no map to define the vulnerability but vulnerability curves instead.
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Projection and reference system
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SGR ETRS 1989 UTM (31N)
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Maps description
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Different vehicular occupancy patterns have been established in Barcelona though an analysis of the aerial photograph. These patterns are presented in this map.
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Type
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Public
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License
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Free
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Data set (Raster/shp )
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geo-referenced information obtained
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| Main participants |
Eduardo Martínez-Gomariz, Cetaqua, Water Technology Centre
Edwar Forero-Ortiz, Cetaqua, Water Technology Centre
Beniamino Russo, Aquatec, SUEZ Water Advanced Solutions
Luca Locatelli, Aquatec, SUEZ Water Advanced Solutions
Maria Guerrero-Hidalga, Cetaqua, Water Technology Centre
Dani Yubero, Aquatec, SUEZ Water Advanced Solutions
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4. Surface traffic disruption
5. Waste containers stability
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Description of vulnerable elements.
Vulnerability classes for all relevant element at risk types.
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In Barcelona there are a total of 27,134 containers, which can be classified either according to the fraction they contain (i.e., waste, organic, paper and cardboard, packaging, and glass), their volume in litres (i.e., 3,200; 3,000; 2,400; 2,200; and 1,800) or the way they are loaded (i.e., lateral, bilateral, rear, underground). The percentage distribution according to their fractions is as follows: 44% (waste), 22% (organic), 12% (paper and cardboard), 11% (packaging), and 11% (glass). Regarding their loading their distribution is as follows: 62% (lateral), 25% (bilateral), 12% (rear), and 1% (underground). Due to the less percentage of rear and underground loading-type containers when comparing with lateral and bilateral type, only the former have been taken into account in this study, which is an 87% of the total number of containers. Three scenarios have been studied: containers empty, 50% filled and full.
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Data sources
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The Barcelona City Council has performed a GIS-based map with the location of all types of containers across Barcelona city.
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Scale of work or resolution
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City scale considering waste container location
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Relationships
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A container may be more or less vulnerable to floods depending on its volume, fraction and filling degree.
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Functions / Tables
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Stability functions have been developed based on an analysis of forces acting on a flooded container by establishing equilibrium conditions for the different modes of instability (i.e. sliding, toppling and floating) (Figure 1). These functions are dependent on both hydraulic variables, velocity and water depth. Moreover, the characteristics of each container (e.g. volume, dimensions or fraction they may contain) determine the shape of each function. The obtained stability thresholds will be employed to analyse the potential behaviour of containers against floods in Barcelona caused by historical and low-return-period design storms (i.e. 1, 10 and 50 years).
Figure 1 Sliding and toppling stability thresholds for a lateral and 3,200 L container, waste fraction and (a) empty container scenario, (b) 50% filled container scenario, and (c) full container scenario
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Maps description
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Vulnerability is defined through stability curves which have been developed per each type of container. All containers considered in the study are presented in these maps indicating their capacity (i.e. volume) and the type of fraction they contain.
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Projection and reference system
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SGR ETRS 1989 UTM (31N)
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Type
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Public
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License
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Free
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Data set (Raster/shp )
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Shapefile
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| Main participants |
Eduardo Martínez-Gomariz, Cetaqua, Water Technology Centre
Beniamino Russo, Aquatec, SUEZ Water Advanced Solutions
Dani Yubero, Aquatec, SUEZ Water Advanced Solutions
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6. Flooding of coastal critical infrastructures and services
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Description of vulnerable elements.
Vulnerability classes for all relevant element at risk types.
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The study focused on the following key infrastructures and urban services potentially flooded due to sea level rise:
· Main Combined Sewer Overflows (CSOs) and pipes that could be partially inundated by the static mean sea level rise
· Permanently inundated (practically lost) beaches, river deltas, etc.
· Critical infrastructures (Breakwaters and Docks), potentially exposed to flooding produced by sea level rise
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Data sources
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The Barcelona City Council has performed a GIS-based map with the location of the vulnerable elements.
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Scale of work or resolution
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City scale with special focus on coastal regions
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Maps description
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Being this an intermediate process, maps have not been developed.
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Projection and reference system
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Type
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License
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Data set (Raster/shp )
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| Main participants |
Beniamino Russo, Aquatec, SUEZ Water Advanced Solutions
Luca Locatelli, SUEZ Water Advanced Solutions
Dani Yubero, Aquatec, SUEZ Water Advanced Solutions
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