The Science
Floods are among the most dangerous and fatal natural disasters in the world and they will increase due to climate change in the coming years. How humans react to disasters has a major effect on the impact and recovery time of floods in coupled human-environment systems. The perception of risk, as well as adaptive behaviours for prevention, preparation, response, and recovery during flood events depend on individual and collective status and cognitive determinants. Human-flood interactions are characterised by several feedbacks between the population in the floodplain as a social system and the floodplain as an economic and environmental system, that are yet to be fully understood.
The Artist
Nadja Veigel is a doctoral researcher at the Helmholz Einstein international Berlin research school in Data Science. She is interested in the interactions of social and natural systems and exploring the latter through data and occasionally paintings. She has always been passionate about art.
The Theme
This digital drawing shows the influence we have on the severity of floods as well as their effects. Climate change as the flood and rain coming from a person’s hands. It is an illustration of interconnectedness in Geosciences and the social aspect that comes with researching natural disasters. Feedbacks are interactions that enhance each other’s effects. They have a repetitive character as the mirroring aspect of the image represents. For example, a dam might be created to protect people from floods but it can have a reverse effect because more people settle in areas that are prone to flooding. Therefore, the population is even more vulnerable to floods in case of a technical failure.
Copyright statement. This work is published under the CC BY-NC-SA license