Métodos para la evaluación del riesgo de inundación fluvial: revisión de literatura y propuesta metodológica para Ecuador

Abstract

Floods represent one of the most frequent natural hazards globally, resulting in considerable economic and social losses in affected populations. Approaches based on risk assessment are increasingly accepted and incorporated into flood risk management in recent decades. Despite considerable progress in the development of loss estimation tools, they still present high uncertainties and disparities that often lead to questioning their quality. This work presents an in-depth and updated review of the different analytical and methodological tools incorporated in several existing models. A comparative analysis of the methodologies showed that the components and characteristics included by the different methods are highly heterogeneous and the vast majority do not incorporate an explicit validation of the model results. This comparison required a deep understanding of the structures, mechanisms and underlying assumptions of each method. Finally, the paper presents the general characteristics and the main components of a methodological proposal for the analytical evaluation of flood loss estimates for Ecuador, from the synthesis of all the evaluated methods and based on the available data.