Assessing the impact of climate change on fluvial flood losses in urban areas: a case study of Pamplona (Spain)

Climate change is expected to increase the frequency and magnitude of flooding. Furthermore, in recent years, there has been an increase in city extent and population densities. This study considers the metropolitan area of Pamplona (Spain) as a case study. The delta changes in precipitation quantiles in the Arga River catchment, obtained from 12 climate models, have been transformed into peak flow delta changes using the Real-time Interactive Basin Simulator (RIBS) model. Also, three percentiles of flood quantile delta changes are selected. Water depths and flood extents expected in future flood events have been obtained using the two-dimensional Iber hydrodynamic model. The Safer_DAMAGE algorithm has been used to assess flood losses in urban areas at the building scale. The results show that flood losses are expected to be smaller for low return periods and greater for high return periods.