Global Flood and Landslide Catalog: Compilation and Applications

A global digitized inventory of floods is needed for assessing the spatial distribution and temporal trends of flood hazards and for evaluating flood prediction models. This study describes the development of a global flood catalog compiled from news reports, scholarly articles, remote sensing images, and other natural hazard databases. The events cataloged in the inventory include information on the geographic location, date, duration, affected population, information source, and a qualitative measure of the event’s magnitude and location accuracy. To minimize biases we cross-checked the catalog with different sources and eliminated any redundancies. This research presents the compilation methodology used to develop a digitized Global Flood Inventory (GFI) for the period 1998-2008. This global flood inventory differs from other flood catalogs by providing a publicly available spreadsheet that details all events with both descriptive and digitized information. This inventory has been proven useful for mapping natural hazards over the globe and for evaluating flood prediction model. This global flood inventory research compliments our companion catalog: global landslide hazards.