Publication: Three Feet Under: The Impact of Floods on Urban Jobs, Connectivity, and Infrastructure
Abstract
This paper analyses the degree to which
infrastructure reliability and urban economic activity in
several African cities is impacted by flooding. It combines
firm-level micro data, flood maps, and several spatial data
layers across cities through a harmonized geospatial network
analysis. The analysis shows that a significant share of
jobs in cities is directly affected by floods. It further
details how transport infrastructure is subjected to
significant flood risk that disproportionally affects main
roads in many cities. While direct flood effects are
revealed to be significant, this work further shows how
knock-on implications for the entire urban economy might be
even larger. Regardless of the direct flood exposure of
firms, flooded transport networks mean that disruptions
propagate across the city and drastically reduce the
connectivity between firms. Access to hospitals is also
found to be reduced significantly -- even during relatively
light flooding events: From a third of locations in Kampala,
floods mean that people would no longer be able to reach
hospitals within the "golden hour" -- a rule of
thumb referring to the window of time that maximizes the
likelihood of survival after a severe medical incident.
Overall, this study showcases the use of high-detail
city-level analyses to better understand the localized
impacts of natural hazards on urban infrastructure networks.
Link to Data Set
Citation
“Rentschler, Jun; Braese, Johannes; Jones, Nick; Avner, Paolo. 2019. Three Feet Under: The Impact of Floods on Urban Jobs, Connectivity, and Infrastructure. Policy Research Working Paper;No. 8898. © World Bank, Washington, DC. http://hdl.handle.net/10986/31918 License: CC BY 3.0 IGO.”
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