EcoSeed
Chinese tourists walking on Bund during the Chinese May 1st holiday, Shanghai, China.
The city of Shanghai could be the next to find itself in a standstill by an extreme flooding event according to a study by a team of scientists from Britain and the Netherlands.
In this new study, nine cities built on river deltas around the world were assessed to calculate their flood vulnerability. In addition to Shanghai these were, Dhaka. Bangladesh; Casablanca, Morocco; Calcutta, India; Buenos Aires, Argentina; Osaka, Japan; Marseille, France; Rotterdam, the Netherlands; and Manila, Philippines.
According to Professor Nigel Wright, who worked on the study as the leader of a team from the University of Leeds, a city’s vulnerability to extreme flooding is a complex issue that should take in a lot of variables including what effect exposure to flooding would have in economic activities both locally, nationally and on the global scale.
“Our index looks at how cities are prepared for the worst – for example, do they have flood defenses, do they have buildings that are easy to clean up and repair after the flood? It is important to know how quickly a city can recover from a major flood,” explained Professor Wright.
