Freak floods in Derna, eastern Libya, on September 11, 2023, leveled two-thirds of the coastal city … [+]
Over 11,000 people have died and several are still missing following the landfall of Mediterranean storm Daniel in Libya this past weekend. Inland areas experienced flooding, as indicated by images released by the European Union’s space programme on Wednesday. Coastal settlements situated near or on alluvial fans and deltas of ancient Wadi, which typically refers to river valleys, were completely devastated. In the hardest-hit city of Derna, the flood wiped out two-thirds of all structures and claimed the lives of over 2,000 people.
“The infrastructure needs to be prepared for such events,” says Auroop Ganguly, Northeastern’s distinguished professor of civil and environmental engineering.
Experts refer to a “grey swan” as a foreseeable but unlikely event with significant and far-reaching long-term effects. Modern dams, reservoirs, and flood control infrastructure are designed to endure meteorological conditions experienced in the past century. However, with a warming climate, the likelihood of grey swan events of unprecedented magnitude is higher. Mediterranean storms are not new, but storm Daniel’s torrential rainfall was likely exacerbated by the hottest sea surface temperatures on record, according to a NASA news release. In Libya, the flood was worsened by poorly maintained infrastructure, a consequence of a decade of conflict as different political and military factions vie for control. Additionally, a warmer climate places added stress on construction materials, compromising the performance and durability of structures.
“If you consider long-term climate variability and change, it should influence the design of hydraulic infrastructure, dams, and reservoirs,” adds Ganguly.
Ganguly, whose work focuses on data-driven analyses of water, weather, and climate systems, asserts that this is a problem faced by dam operators worldwide.
“The main issue is that dams and hydraulic infrastructure—and this applies to many parts of the world—were not adequately prepared in the long term in terms of design considerations and in the short term in terms of managing the consequences,” he explains.
“A significant portion of physical infrastructure in both the developing world and the West is constructed based on cost-effectiveness analysis that fails to account for the more extreme weather events resulting from climate change,” says Daniel Aldrich, a Northeastern professor, director of the university’s Security and Resilience Program, and co-director at the Global Resilience Institute.
Other extreme events aggravated by climate change and lack of preparedness include the levee failures during Hurricane Katrina in August 2005 in New Orleans and the devastating floods in Pakistan in 2022.
“Consider California, for instance,” says Ganguly. “In 2021, the region experienced severe and potentially long-lasting droughts. Then it was hit with atmospheric rivers, resulting in massive floods. This drought-deluge cycle is now a challenge we must face in terms of climate variability and how it intersects with our infrastructure and engineered systems.”
Tanner Stening provided additional material and interviews for Northeastern University.
