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Abstract:
Assessing long-term trends in flood losses and attributing them to climatic and socioeconomic
changes requires comprehensive and systematic collection of historical information. Here, we present flood im-
pact data for Europe that are part of the HANZE (Historical Analysis of Natural HaZards) database. The dataset
covers riverine, pluvial, coastal, and compound floods that have occurred in 42 European countries between 1870
and 2020. The data were obtained by extensive data collection from more than 800 sources ranging from news
reports through government databases to scientific papers. The dataset includes 2521 events characterized by
at least one impact statistic: area inundated, fatalities, persons affected. or economic loss. Economic losses are
presented both in the original currencies and price levels and with the inflation and exchange rate adjusted to the
2020 value of the euro. The spatial footprint of affected areas is consistently recorded using more than 1400 sub-
national units corresponding, with minor exceptions, to the European Union’s Nomenclature of Territorial Units
for Statistics (NUTS) level 3. Daily start and end dates, information on causes of the events, notes on data quality
issues or associated non-flood impacts, and full bibliography of each record supplement the dataset. Apart from
the possibility of downloading the data (https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.8410025; Paprotny, 2023a), the database
can be viewed, filtered, and visualized online at https://naturalhazards.eu (last access: 4 November 2024). The
dataset is designed to be complementary to HANZE-Exposure, a high-resolution model of historical exposure
changes (such as population and asset values) and be easily usable in statistical and spatial analyses, including
multi-hazard studies
