Hazard data
FIAT computes the impact of a flood event or the risk of flooding on a community by using flood maps as hazard input. Flood maps describe the potential flood extent and magnitude in specific geographic areas. Currently, FIAT is only
These flood maps can be obtained from various sources. The The Global Flood Database provides an extensive amount of global flood hazard mapping products.
The user can also create their own flood model using the SFINCS model
The user is free to run the model with a variety of flood scenarios, e.g., including mitigation and adaptation measures over a range of future climate conditions, as long as flood maps are available for those scenarios. The flood maps can be either flood elevation or flood depth maps.
Flood elevation maps use the datum as a reference point, whereas flood depth maps use the ground elevation to refer to. The datum of the elevation map must be the same as the one used to obtain the ground elevation in the exposure data.
With FIAT, the user has the option to assess the impact of a single flood event or the flood risk based on a set of events with multiple return periods. To do the latter, the user must provide multiple hazard maps with the same extent and projection.
In each case, some requirements must be met. The hazard files of any map should be made available as a raster file, see the acceptable file types at the bottom of this page. It is recommended to place the hazard files in the ‘hazard’ folder, see the folder structure. The file name is free to be chosen by the user and must simply be refered to in the settings.toml configuration file.
Types of maps
FIAT knows two types of hazard maps:
Risk maps are mainly used to calculate the EAD (Estimated Annual Damages). If risk is not set to true in the settings file, the supplied map will be treated as an event map.
Supported formats
An overview of supported formats is presented here