This report presents the draft outline of the CORFU Health Impacts Model. The model consists
of assessing the risk to human health in four steps:
Hazard identification
Hazard characterisation (or dose-response assessment)
Exposure assessment
Risk characterisation
The health impacts model has four components. The first of these is the risk to human life
component, and adapts a model developed in the FLOODsite project to estimate the number
of deaths and injuries that could be caused by flooding. The next component relates to
waterborne diseases and illnesses that can be assessed by means of a Quantitative Microbial
Risk Assessment. Thirdly, the model takes account of other diseases (such as those
transmitted by vectors) and suggests the use of relative risk information to estimate the
impact of this disease. A similar approach is suggested to consider the mental health impacts
of flooding.
Finally, the report describes how the health risks could be characterised using the Disability
Adjusted Life Year (DALY).The work described in this publication was supported by the European Community’s Seventh Framework Programme through the grant to the budget of CORFU
Collaborative Research on Flood Resilience in Urban Areas, Contract 244047
