Socioeconomic predictors of vulnerability to flood-induced displacement.

ABSTRACT: Floods displace an average of 12 million people every year, and are responsible for 54% of all disaster-induced displacements. Displacement risk scales with the vulnerability of exposed populations, but this vulnerability is poorly understood at a global scale. Here we show that measures of human development and rural areas explain more of the variance of displacement vulnerability than income levels measured by gross domestic product. We combine global flood and displacement data to estimate vulnerability, as the ratio of displacement to exposure, for over 300 historical flood events. We find that this vulnerability varies by several orders of magnitude both between and within countries. A random forest regression shows that infant mortality rate and population density are among the most

SUBMITTER: Mester B 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC12441118 | biostudies-literature | 2025 Sep

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature