The project by several research organizations in the Netherlands and the World Resources Institute developed the first public tool that shows the estimated flood risk in most countries and how it's expected to rise over the next 25 years. The project, called the Aqueduct Global Flood Analyzer, also features a global map showing the encroaching reach of rivers as temperatures rise and land is developed.
The economic impacts are growing even faster than the increase in flood victims, researchers say. And sea-level rise -- which makes a further impact on many rivers near the coast -- will be factored into a later study.
"We found that today, river flooding affects about $96 billion U.S. dollars in GDP each year on average," said Tianyi Luo, a research analyst with WRI. "In 2030, that [global] number can grow to around $520 billion."
The biggest disruptions are expected to happen in Asia, where the pace of urbanization is outrunning the effects of climate change. More people are concentrating in river cities like Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam; Jakarta, Indonesia; Dhaka, Bangladesh; and Shanghai, China.
"Southeast Asia will see a large increase in risk, and climate change does cause a significant part of this risk increase. But really, these climate change impacts ... are dwarfed by impacts of socioeconomic growth, in particular to the concentrated growth of Southeast Asia's megacities in flood-prone areas," said Hessel Winsemius, a researcher at Deltares, an institute that studies deltas.
More broadly, climate impacts are expected to increase people's risk of being flooded more than socioeconomic changes. The researchers estimate that climate change could drive two-thirds of the increase in the population exposed to the peril worldwide.
Read more at Floods Could Affect Twice as Many People Worldwide Within 15 Years
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