Loss of Life in River and Flash Floods in Europe: Evaluation of Deterministic Approaches and Implications for Risk Assessment

This study evaluates deterministic flood fatality models using a harmonised dataset of river and flash flood events in Europe (1980–2024). The objective is to quantify differences across data sources and critically assess the applicability of commonly used prediction models for hydrological floods, with particular emphasis on flash floods, which remain poorly represented in existing methodologies. The analysis integrates large-scale databases on flood fatalities (HANZE, EM-DAT) with detailed eve