ECFAS Impact Tool, D5.3 – Algorithms for impact assessment - ECFAS project (GA 101004211), www.ecfas.eu

The European Copernicus Coastal Flood Awareness System (ECFAS) project aimed at contributing to the evolution of the Copernicus Emergency Management Service (https://emergency.copernicus.eu/) by demonstrating the technical and operational feasibility of a European Coastal Flood Awareness System. Specifically, ECFAS provides a much-needed solution to bolster coastal resilience to climate risk and reduce population and infrastructure exposure by monitoring and supporting disaster preparedness, two factors that are fundamental to damage prevention and recovery if a storm hits.

The ECFAS Proof-of-Concept development ran from January 2021 to December 2022. The ECFAS project was a collaboration between Scuola Universitaria Superiore IUSS di Pavia (Italy, ECFAS Coordinator), Mercator Ocean International (France), Planetek Hellas (Greece), Collecte Localisation Satellites (France), Consorzio Futuro in Ricerca (Italy), Universitat Politecnica de Valencia (Spain), University of the Aegean (Greece), and EurOcean (Portugal), and was funded by the European Commission H2020 Framework Programme within the call LC-SPACE-18-EO-2020 - Copernicus evolution: research activities in support of the evolution of the Copernicus services. 

Reference literature:

Duo, E., Montes, J., Le Gal, M., Fernández-Montblanc, T., Ciavola, P., and Armaroli, C.: Validated probabilistic approach to estimate flood direct impacts on the population and assets on European coastlines, Nat. Hazards Earth Syst. Sci., 25, 13–39, https://doi.org/10.5194/nhess-25-13-2025, 2025.

Montes, J., Duo, E., Souto, P., Gastal, V., Grigoriadis, D., Le Gal, M., Fernández-Montblanc, T., Delbour, S., Ieronymidi, E., Armaroli, C., and Ciavola, P.: Evaluating coastal flood impacts at the EU-scale: the ECFAS approach, EGU General Assembly 2022, Vienna, Austria, 23–27 May 2022, EGU22-11295, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu22-11295, 2022.

Description of the product

The ECFAS Impact Tool is composed of a compressed directory with MATLAB 2021b scripts, a compiled version (Windows 10) of the code and a technical document. All products were implemented under Task 5.3 - Selection and verification of the impact assessment method and represent the Deliverable 5.3 - Algorithms for impact assessment.

The ECFAS Impact Tool performs a comprehensive analysis of the impacts generated by coastal inundation by assessing the affected population, the damage to buildings, roads and railways and the exposure of a variety of other assets (e.g. agriculture, points of interest, etc.). The source code (MATLAB 2021b) is provided along with a Windows stand-alone executable. The user can reproduce the impact assessment for the ECFAS test cases, and for user-defined study cases, providing the proper input.

The Impact Tool is associated with the following additional ECFAS products: 

- The ECFAS Impact Catalogue

Catalogue in Zenodo: Duo, E., Montes Pérez, J., Le Gal, M., Souto Ceccon, P. E., Cabrita, P., Fernández Montblanc, T., & Ciavola, P. (2022). ECFAS Pan-EU Impact Catalogue, D5.4 – Pan-EU flood maps catalogue - ECFAS project (GA 101004211), www.ecfas.eu (1.2) [Data set]. Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.6951527

- The ECFAS Pan-EU Flood Catalogue

Catalogue in Zenodo: Le Gal, M., Fernández Montblanc, T., Montes Pérez, J., Duo, E., Souto Ceccon, P.E., Cabrita, P., & Ciavola, P. (2022). ECFAS Pan-EU Flood Catalogue, D5.4 – Pan-EU flood maps catalogue - ECFAS project (GA 101004211), https://www.ecfas.eu/ (1.2) [Data set]. Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.6778807

Reference literature: Le Gal, M., Fernández-Montblanc, T., Duo, E., Montes Perez, J., Cabrita, P., Souto Ceccon, P., Gastal, V., Ciavola, P., and Armaroli, C.: A new European coastal flood database for low–medium intensity events, Nat. Hazards Earth Syst. Sci., 23, 3585–3602, https://doi.org/10.5194/nhess-23-3585-2023, 2023.

This ECFAS Impact Tool is made available under GNU General Public License v2.0 or later. Any rights in individual contents of the Impact Tool are licensed under the GNU General Public License v2.0 or later.

This technical document is made available under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

Disclaimer:

ECFAS partners provide the data "as is" and "as available" without warranty of any kind. The ECFAS partners shall not be held liable resulting from the use of the information and data provided.

This project has received funding from the Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement No. 101004211