Citation

Li W, Hu K, Hu X, He B, Tu Y. Int. J. Disaster Risk Reduct. 2019; 38: e101193.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2019, Elsevier Publishing)

DOI

10.1016/j.ijdrr.2019.101193

PMID

unavailable

Abstract

Extreme hydrological events such as flash floods are likely to become more frequent and extreme because of increasingly extreme weather and climate events. Flash floods occur particularly frequently in China and cause huge losses to society annually. Consequently, the Chinese government significantly increased the investments in comprehensive flash flood disaster prevention and mitigation systems. These measures (implemented in 2000-2015) played a pivotal role in reducing flash flood fatalities. The absolute annual death toll and average fatality rate in single torrential rainstorms in 2008-2015 decreased by 40% and 42% with the massively increased investments compared with those of previous years, respectively. However, the efficiency of fiscal investment in reducing flash flood fatalities has not been optimal at the national and provincial scales in most years. The technical inefficiency of the recent eight years was mainly influenced by the scale inefficiency at the national scale; by contrast, the technical inefficiency of the most recent years depended largely on pure technical efficiency (PTE) on a provincial scale. This implies that fiscal investment should be allocated more reasonably through dynamic risk assessment at the national level, and the selection of prevention measures must place more emphasis on rationality and effectiveness in different areas. PTE at a regional scale should be increased by solving the limitations of existing measures. Hence, rigorous analyses are necessary. The results of this study offer a different perspective on flash flood disaster prevention systems and can be used to compare flood risk management method to those of other countries.

Language: en

Keywords

Countermeasures; Flash flood fatalities; Investment efficiency; Rainfall-related deaths