Flood hazard maps

Example: Shapefiles or rasters showing flood inundation extent and depth during recorded historical events.

Step-by-step guidance

1. Dataset-level metadata

Select the following values when describing your dataset:

  • Risk data type: hazard

  • Title: “Flood inundation maps for [event/region]”

  • Description: Brief description of the flood events, modeling approach, or observational data source

  • Publisher: Organization that created or compiled the flood maps

  • License: Appropriate license

2. Resources

Add resources for flood hazard map files:

  • Format: shapefile, geopackage, geotiff, or netcdf

  • Spatial resolution: Resolution for raster data (e.g., 30m) or scale for vector data

  • Coordinate reference system: EPSG:4326 or appropriate projected CRS for the region

You may have separate files for:

  • Flood extent (binary inundation)

  • Flood depth (water depth values)

  • Flow velocity (if available)

3. Hazard metadata

Under the Hazard section:

Event sets

  • Analysis type: historical (for observed events) or scenario (for modeled events)

  • Calculation method: observed, simulated, or inferred

  • Event count: Number of flood events documented

  • Occurrence time start: Date of event(s) or start of analysis period

  • Occurrence time end: End date if multiple events or modeling period

  • Occurrence time span: Duration in ISO 8601 format

Hazards (within the event set)

  • Hazard type: flood

  • Processes: Select one or more:

    • fluvial_flood (river flooding)

    • pluvial_flood (surface water/rainfall flooding)

    • coastal_flood (storm surge, tidal flooding)

  • Intensity measure:

    • fl_wd:m (flood water depth in meters)

    • fl_fd:m3/s (flood discharge)

    • v_fld:m/s (flow velocity)

4. Spatial coverage

Define the geographic extent:

  • Scale: sub-national, national, or regional

  • Countries: Select applicable ISO 3166-1 alpha-3 country codes

  • Administrative regions: Specify provinces/states if relevant

  • Bounding box: Specify coordinates of the mapped area

Key considerations

  • Clearly distinguish between flood extent (yes/no inundation) and flood depth (water depth values)

  • For historical events, include event dates and names in the description

  • Specify whether flood defenses are considered in the modeling

  • Document the source of elevation data (e.g., DEM resolution) in additional details