A Europe-wide inventory of citizen-led energy action with data from 29 countries and over 10000 initiatives

Numerous case studies show that citizens engage in various ways in renewable and low carbon energy projects, thereby contributing to the sustainable energy transition. To date, however, a systematic and cross-country database on citizen-led initiatives and projects is lacking. By performing a major compilation and reviewing copious data sources from websites to official registries, we provide a Europe-wide inventory with over 10,000 initiatives and 16,000 production units in 29 countries, focusing on the past 20 years. Our data allow cross-country statistical analysis, supporting the elicitation of empirical insights capable of extending beyond the perspective of single case studies. Our data also align with ongoing efforts to implement two EU Directives that aim at strengthening the active role of citizens in the energy transition. While the focus of our data collection is on Europe, the data and methodology can contribute to the global analysis of citizen-led energy action

Proposal of a flash flood impact severity scale for the classification and mapping of flash flood impacts

Flash floods cause some of the most severe natural disasters around the world. The extensive diversity and discontinuity of flash flood impacts, which are controlled mostly by surface properties, lead to major difficulties in obtaining a holistic appraisal and a realistic overview of flash flood effects and their severity and make predicting future impacts a significant challenge. Current practices of describing flood impact severity use a limited set of criteria and assign a qualitative characterization (e.g. major, catastrophic, etc.) to each event. The present study proposes an approach that provides a coherent overview of these effects through the classification of impact types and severity and for the first time mapping their spatial extent in a continuous way across the floodplain. To this end, the flood effects are grouped into 4 categories depending on the affected elements, namely: (i) impacts on built environment (ii) impacts on man-made mobile objects, (iii) impacts on the natural environment (including vegetation, agriculture, geomorphology, and pollution) and (iv) impacts on the human population (entrapments, injuries, fatalities). Each of the four above categories is classified in a system of 10 severity classes that are defined with a logical order of increasing importance of damages forming a severity scale. The scale's application is tested on a catastrophic flood event of 2017 in Mandra, Greece, with a well-described and wide range of impacts, including 24 fatalities. The application allowed the development of high-resolution impact-severity maps that revealed interesting damage patterns and highlighted high severity areas. The resulting maps offer insights on future impacts and indicate a potential to provide the groundwork for targeted prevention measures as well as correlations of impact severity with hydrological aspects of flooding. © 2020 Elsevier B.V

An integrated approach of ground and aerial observations in flash flood disaster investigations. The case of the 2017 Mandra flash flood in Greece

On November 15, 2017, a high intensity convective storm, reaching 300 mm in 13 h in the core zone of the event, hit the western part of the region of Attica in Greece, causing a catastrophic flash flood in the town of Mandra and a tragic loss of 24 people, making it the most deadly flood in the country, in a period of 40 years. The research team surveyed the area during and after the flood using a combination of systematic ground and aerial observations with the aid of an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV), aiming to reconstruct the basic physical and hydrological characteristics of the flood and its impacts. The analysis produced detailed flood extent and depth maps that provided a comprehensive description of the physical characteristics of floodwaters across the inundated area. Peak discharge was estimated, using a UAV-derived digital surface model, at two locations, corresponding to the two main tributaries and indicated an impressive hydrological response, between 9 and 10 m3/s/km2. Impact analysis on the basis of these observations showed an extensive diversity, including effects in geomorphology, vegetation, buildings, infrastructure and human population. Analysis of meteorological, botanical and geomorphological evidence lead to the conclusion that this flash flood was a very rare event. Results demonstrate that the combination of aerial and ground observations allow an enhanced and holistic reconstruction of a flash flood and its impacts with high accuracy, leading to the conclusion that the approach used has a significant potential in many aspects of flood disaster investigations. © 2018 Elsevier Lt