Giuliano Di Baldassarre

Uppsala University | UU · Department of Earth Sciences

Air pollution is an important anthropogenic hazard for its effect on human health and the environment. Understanding how the population perceives the risk associated with air pollution is a crucial aspect to inform future policies and communication strategies. The aim of this study is to unravel the association between air pollution concentrations...

As the adverse impacts of hydrological extremes increase in many regions of the world, a better understanding of the drivers of changes in risk and impacts is essential for effective flood and drought risk management and climate adaptation. However, there is currently a lack of comprehensive, empirical data about the processes, interactions, and fe...

Economic inequality is rising within many countries globally, and this can significantly influence the social vulnerability to natural hazards. We analysed income inequality and flood disasters in 67 middle- and high-income countries between 1990 and 2018 and found that unequal countries tend to suffer more flood fatalities. This study integrates g...

Over the past two decades, more than 80 metropolitan cities across the world have faced severe water shortages due to droughts and unsustainable water use. Future projections are even more alarming, since urban water crises are expected to escalate and most heavily affect those who are socially, economically and politically disadvantaged. Here we s...

Extreme droughts are affecting millions of livestock farmers in Sub-Saharan Africa, causing water shortages, famines, migration, and fatalities. The construction of new small water infrastructures (e.g., wells, boreholes, and small dams) is increasingly supported by NGOs and national governments to improve water availability for agro-pastoralists,...

As the adverse impacts of hydrological extremes increase in many regions of the world, a better understanding of the drivers of changes in risk and impacts is essential for effective flood and drought risk management and climate adaptation. However, there is currently a lack of comprehensive, empirical data about the processes, interactions and fee...

Water resources management and hydrological risk reduction require anticipation of emergent (unexpected or unintended) phenomena as fundamental dynamics of complex human-water systems. Explaining and characterizing these sociohydrological phenomena is a central focus of Panta Rhei-Everything Flows, the Scientific Decade of the International Associa...

Human actions are increasingly altering most river basins worldwide, resulting in changes in hydrological processes and extreme events. Yet, global patterns of changes between seasonal surface water and urbanization remain largely unknown. Here we perform a worldwide analysis of 106 large river basins and uncover global trends of annual maximum flo...

In this reply to Thaler (2022), we take the opportunity to discuss two main aspects from his piece to continue the discussion: 1) the integration of social and natural sciences data, and 2) the importance of transdisciplinary research. We agree, and highlight that necessary learning, reflections and participation processes are time-intensive for re...

This paper conceptualises droughts as socioecological phenomena coproduced by the recursive engagement of human and non-human transformations. Through an interdisciplinary approach that integrates political ecology, material geographies and hydroclimatology, this work simultaneously/home/ene apprehends the role of politics and power in reshaping dr...

Economic inequality is rising within many countries globally, and this can significantly influence social vulnerability to natural hazards. Through a global analysis of income inequality and flood disasters in middle- and high-income countries, we show that unequal countries tend to suffer higher flood fatalities. Based on our results, we argue tha...

Socio-hydrology has expanded and been effective in exposing the hydrological community to ideas and approaches from other scientific disciplines, and social sciences in particular. Yet it still has much to explore regarding how to capture human agency and how to combine different methods and disciplinary views from both the hydrological and social...

Risk management has reduced vulnerability to floods and droughts globally1,2, yet their impacts are still increasing³. An improved understanding of the causes of changing impacts is therefore needed, but has been hampered by a lack of empirical data4,5. On the basis of a global dataset of 45 pairs of events that occurred within the same area, we sh...

There is an urgent need to raise awareness of the risks for generalizing 'flood' within the development of new risk assessment framework and adaptation strategies, and further outline opportunities for ensuring current and future multiform flood risk can be both assessed and reduced in particular for the most vulnerable populations. This requires e...

Air pollution is an important anthropic hazard for its effect on human health and the environment. Understanding how the population perceives the risk associated with air pollution is a crucial aspect to inform future policies and communication strategies. The aim of this study is to unravel the association between air pollution concentrations and...

Whether disasters influence adaptation actions in cities is contested. Yet, the extant knowledge base primarily consists of single or small-N case studies, so there is no global overview of the evidence on disaster impacts and adaptation. Here, we use regression analysis to explore the effects of disaster frequency and severity on four adaptation a...

Understanding public risk perception is an essential step to develop effective measures reducing the spread of disease outbreaks. Here we compare epidemic risk perceptions during two different periods of the COVID-19 pandemic in Italy and Sweden. To this end, we analyzed the results of two nationwide surveys carried out in both countries in two per...

Background The success of vaccination campaigns against COVID-19 infection is vital for moving from a COVID-19 pandemic to an endemic scenario. We aimed to unravel the influence of the risk perception of epidemics along with individual and contextual factors on adherence to COVID-19 vaccination campaigns in Italy and Sweden. Methods We compared th...

Human activities have increasingly intensified the severity, frequency, and negative impacts of droughts in several regions across the world. This trend has led to broader scientific conceptualizations of drought risk that account for human actions and their interplays with natural systems. This review focuses on physical and engineering sciences t...

In this reply we thank both authors for their thoughtful insights on our original opinion piece “Guiding principles for hydrologists conducting interdisciplinary research and fieldwork with participants.” We believe these discussions will help to inspire and guide current and future researchers and illustrate how to continue to bring together physi...

Human activities both aggravate and alleviate streamflow drought. Here we show that aggravation is dominant in contrasting cases around the world analysed with a consistent methodology. Our 28 cases included different combinations of human-water interactions. We found that water abstraction aggravated all drought characteristics, with increases of...

School closure has been a common response to COVID-19. Yet, its implementation has hardly ever been based on rigorous analysis of its costs and benefits. We aim to first illustrate the unintended consequences and side effects of school closure, and then discuss the policy and research implications. This commentary frames evidence from the most rece...

In a recent editorial in the journal Nature Sustainability , the editors raised the concern that journal submissions on water studies appear too similar. The gist of the editorial: “too many publications and not enough ideas.” In this response, we contest this notion, and point to the numerous new ideas that result from taking a broader view of the...

The severe impact of global crises, such as COVID-19 and climate change, is plausibly reshaping the way in which people perceive risks. In this paper, we examine and compare how global crises and local disasters influence public perceptions of multiple hazards in Italy and Sweden. To this end, we integrate information about the occurrence of hazard...

There are growing concerns about the impacts of climate change on equitable urban development. As cities are becoming increasingly exposed to anthropogenic droughts, stakes are particularly high in contexts of severe vulnerability. Yet, the impacts of future urban droughts and the societal responses they will elicit remain poorly understood. Here w...

We present a system-dynamics model to simulate the interplay between water management, hydrological extremes (droughts and floods), and society. We illustrate the potential and limitations of the model with an example application to the Brisbane river basin (Australia). In particular, we test its capability to explain various phenomena that have be...

Action toward strengthened disaster risk reduction (DRR) ideally builds from evidence-based policymaking to inform decisions and priorities. This is a guiding principle for the Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction (SFDRR), which outlines priorities for action to reduce disaster risk. However, some of these practical guidelines conceal overs...

Riverine flood risk studies often require the identification of areas prone to potential flooding. This modelling process can be based on either (hydrologically derived) flood hazard maps or (topography-based) hydrogeomorphic floodplain maps. In this paper, we derive and compare riverine flood exposure from three global products: a hydrogeomorphic...

Scholars have unravelled the complexities and underlying uncertainties in coupled human and water systems in various fields and disciplines. These complexities, however, are not always reflected in the way in which the dynamics of human–water systems are modelled. One reason is the lack of social data time series, which may be provided by longitudi...

Predicting floods and droughts is essential to inform the development of policy in water management, climate change adaptation and disaster risk reduction. Yet, hydrological predictions are highly uncertain, while the frequency, severity and spatial distribution of extreme events are further complicated by the increasing impact of human activities...

This paper proposes a methodology to model floodplain inundation patterns in data-scarce areas by using global remote sensing data. In particular, MODIS data are used for hydraulic model (HEC-RAS) calibration and validation purposes which is coupled with Geographic Information System (GIS) to map flood extent areas, while NASA's SRTM is used to des...

The severe impact of global crises, such as COVID-19 and climate change, is plausibly reshaping the way in which people perceive risks. In this paper, we examine and compare how global crises and local disasters influence public perceptions of multiple hazards in Italy and Sweden. To this end, we integrate information about the occurrence of hazard...

Traditional, mainstream definitions of drought describe it as deficit in water-related variables or water-dependent activities (e.g., precipitation, soil moisture, surface and groundwater storage, and irrigation) due to natural variabilities that are out of the control of local decision-makers. Here, we argue that within coupled human-water systems...

Riverine flood risk studies require the identification of areas prone to potential flooding. This process can be based on either (hydrologically-derived) flood hazard maps or (topography-based) hydrogeomorphic floodplain maps. In this paper, we derive and compare riverine flood exposure from three global products: a hydrogeomorphic floodplain map (...

Understanding public risk perception is an essential step to develop effective measures reducing the spread of disease outbreaks. Here we compare epidemic risk perceptions during two different periods of the COVID-19 pandemic in Italy and Sweden. To this end, we analyzed the results of two nationwide surveys carried out in both countries in two per...

In a rapidly changing world, what is today an unprecedented extreme may soon become the norm. As a result, extreme-related disasters are expected to become more frequent and intense. This will have widespread socio-economic consequences and affect the ability of different societal groups to recover from and adapt to rapidly changing environmental c...

Numerous scholars have unravelled the complexities and underlying uncertainties of coupled human and water systems in various fields and disciplines. These complexities, however, are not always reflected in the way in which the dynamics of human-water systems are modelled. One reason is the lack of social data times series, which may be provided by...

The sustainability of large dams has been questioned on several grounds. One aspect that has been less explored is that the development of dams and reservoirs often enables agricultural expansion and urban growth, which in turn increase water consumption. As such, dam development influences, while being influenced by, the spatial and temporal distr...

Insights into the heterogeneity of human behaviours and attitudes toward risk require the understanding of the role played by a plurality of factors, such as risk awareness and trust. However, our knowledge of the interplay of these factors is limited, as is our knowledge of the patterns in risk attitudes and behaviours and their evolution over tim...

This study presents a global explanatory analysis of the interplay between the severity of flood losses and human presence in floodplain areas. In particular, we relate economic losses and fatalities caused by floods during 1990‐2000, with changes in human population and built‐up areas in floodplains during 2000‐2015 by exploiting global archives....

2020 is the year of wildfire records. California experienced its three largest fires early in its fire season. The Pantanal, the largest wetland on the planet, burned over 20% of its surface. More than 18 million hectares of forest and bushland burned during the 2019–2020 fire season in Australia, killing 33 people, destroying nearly 2500 homes, an...

Natural hazard events provide opportunities for policy change to enhance disaster risk reduction (DRR), yet it remains unclear whether these events actually fulfill this transformative role around the world. Here, we investigate relationships between the frequency (number of events) and severity (fatalities, economic losses, and affected people) of...

Sociohydrology has advanced understandings of water related phenomena by conceptualizing changes in hydrological flows and risks as the result of the interplay between water and society. However, social power and the heterogeneity of human societies, which are crucial to unravel the feedback mechanisms underlying human-water systems, have not been...

Knowing how people perceive multiple risks is essential to the management and promotion of public health and safety. Here we present a dataset based on a survey (N = 4,154) of public risk perception in Italy and Sweden during the COVID-19 pandemic. Both countries were heavily affected by the first wave of infections in Spring 2020, but their govern...

To explore and address complex water-related issues, true collaborative, interdisciplinary research at the interface of hydrology and social science is necessary. Accordingly, hydrologists are increasingly working with social sciences and becoming involved in fieldwork with participants. With the overarching aim of facilitating collaboration and in...

Most research on hydrological risks focuses either on flood risk or drought risk, whilst floods and droughts are two extremes of the same hydrological cycle. To better design disaster risk reduction (DRR) measures and strategies, it is important to consider interactions between these closely linked phenomena. We show examples of: (a) how flood or d...

This paper proposes a methodology to model floodplain inundation patterns in data-scarce areas by using global remote sensing data. In particular, MODIS data are used for hydraulic model (HEC-RAS) calibration and validation purposes which is coupled with Geographic Information System (GIS) to map flood extent areas, while NASA's SRTM is used to des...

Recent literature in sociohydrology has shown the important role of flood memory in shaping hydrological risk. In this paper, we present a system dynamics model of human–flood interactions that simulates how the river proximity of human settlements is altered by changes in flood memory. We also compare our model outcomes with an unprecedented datas...

Water is at the core of many current and future global challenges, which involve hydrological, technical and social processes. Therefore, successful interdisciplinary research on how water-related issues interact with human activities, actions and responses is increasingly important. Qualitative data and diverse perspectives provide much-needed inf...

Understanding what makes people vulnerable to flooding is key in informing the risk management process. Non-structural measures, such as risk communication, can reduce vulnerability by improving flood risk awareness, but they require a deep understanding of which factors influence risk awareness, and how. We analysed and untangled the role of exper...

Dry spells are sequences of days without precipitation. They can have negative implications for societies, including water security and agriculture. For example, changes in their duration and within-year timing can pose a threat to food production and wildfire risk. Conversely, wet spells are sequences of days with precipitation above a certain thr...

Reservoir storage helps manage hydrological variability, increasing predictability and productivity of water supply. However, there are inevitable tradeoffs, with control of high frequency variability coming at the expense of robustness to low frequency variability. Tightly controlling variability can reduce incentives to maintain adaptive capacity...

When rainfall does not meet crop water requirements, supplemental irrigation is needed to maintain productivity. On-farm ponds can prevent excessive groundwater exploitation – to the benefit of the whole community – but they reduce the cultivated area and require investments by each farmer. Thus, choosing the source of water for irrigation (groundw...

In the era of the Anthropocene, understanding the dynamic interactions between humans and water is crucial for supporting both human well-being and the sustainable management of resources. The current water management challenges are inherently unpredictable and difficult to control. Social-ecological systems (SESs) approaches explicitly recognize t...

Global floodplain mapping has rapidly progressed over the past few years. Different methods have been proposed to identify areas prone to river flooding, resulting in a plethora of available products. Here we assess the potential and limitations of two main paradigms and provide guidance on the use of these global products in assessing flood risk i...

Global floodplain mapping has rapidly progressed over the past few years. Different methods have been proposed to identify areas prone to river flooding, resulting in a plethora of available products. Here we assess the potential and limitations of two main paradigms and provide guidance on the use of these global products in assessing flood risk i...

Over the last few years, several socio-hydrological studies have investigated the risk dynamics generated by the complex interactions between floods and societies, with a focus on either changing reservoir operation rules or raising levees. In this study, we propose a new socio-hydrological model of human–flood interactions that represents both cha...

The back cover image is based on the Overview A review of freely accessible global datasets for the study of floods, droughts and their interactions with human societies, by Sara Lindersson et al., https://doi.org/10.1002/wat2.1424 Supported by: Nightlight data from NASA Black Marble 2012 and 2016. Flood hazard data from JRC Flood Hazard Map of the...

Multi-hazard events can be associated with larger socio-economic impacts than single-hazard events. Understanding the spatio-temporal interactions that characterize the former is therefore of relevance to disaster risk reduction measures. Here, we consider two high-impact hazards, namely wet and dry hydrological extremes, and quantify their global...

The availability of planetary‐scale geospatial datasets that can support the study of water‐related disasters in the Anthropocene is rapidly growing. We review 124 global and free datasets allowing spatial (and temporal) analyses of floods, droughts and their interactions with human societies. Our collection of datasets is available in a descriptiv...

Hydrogeological hazards are increasingly causing damage worldwide due to climatic and socio-economic changes. Building resilient communities is crucial to reduce potential losses. To this end, one of the first steps is to understand how people perceive potential threats around them. This study aims at exploring how risk awareness of, and preparedne...

Levees protect floodplain areas from frequent flooding, but they can paradoxically contribute to more severe flood losses. The construction or reinforcement of levees can attract more assets and people in flood-prone area, thereby increasing the potential flood damage when levees eventually fail. Moreover, structural protection measures can generat...