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Applied Geography 28 (2008) 323336 www.elsevier.com/locate/apgeog

Geographical analysis of damage due to ash oods in southern France: The cases of 1213 November 1999 and 89 September 2002
Freddy Vinet
Department of Geography, University of Montpellier III, EA 3766 Gester, Route de Mende, 34199 Montpellier cedex 5, France

Abstract The southern part of France near the Mediterranean Sea is subject to ash oods generated by heavy rainfalls typical of the Mediterranean climate. In November 1999 (the 12th and 13th) and in September 2002 (the 8th and 9th), 5000 km2 were touched by rainfalls superior to 200 mm in the departments of Aude and Gard. In both cases, maximum precipitation exceeded 500 mm within 24 h. The damage amounted in the hundreds of millions of euros, and there were numerous fatalities: 35 in 1999, and 23 in 2002. Following a survey of available data, this article details the cost of the damage for both ash ood events. The distribution of the damage is quantied by sector of activity (e.g., industry, agriculture). The average ratio euros of loss per inhabitant is quite similar in both cases, but this average hides some geographical discrepancies. Losses in industry can locally worsen the overall toll. The mapping of damage on a local scale and the amount of losses per inhabitant demonstrate that rural areas underwent heavy losses. This was mostly due to the destruction of the public infrastructures (e.g., roads, bridges) that represented more than half of the overall loss. In some rural areas, the cost of ash oods can exceed 15,000 euros per inhabitant. Such ood prevention issues as ood warning systems and land use planning must not focus only on the cities. Death, injury and heavy material losses also disadvantage the rural and mountainous areas where populations and activities are concentrated near rivers. r 2008 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
Keywords: Flash oods; Flood damage; Loss assessment; Economical vulnerability

Introduction te o-France, 1996; The south eastern part of France is regularly affected by heavy rains in autumn (Me Neppel, 1997). Every year, between September and December, they cause damage and fatalities. In the last 10 years, oods have killed more than 100 people in France. Every 10 or 15 years, a catastrophic ash ood affects the Mediterranean regions even more strongly. In less than three years1213 November 1999 and 89 September 2002two catastrophic ash oods struck southern France, killing 58 persons and causing 2300 millions of euros in damage. Numerous studies have been published on those oods; these studies have given rise to unprecedented measures of prevention and have led to several laws reinforcing natural hazards
Tel.: +33 4 67 59 59 29.

E-mail address: freddy.vinet@univ-montp3.fr 0143-6228/$ - see front matter r 2008 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/j.apgeog.2008.02.007

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reduction in France. But papers concern mostly the physical aspects of the oods (Delrieu et al., 2005; Gaume, Livet, Desbordes, & Villeneuve, 2004; Neppel, Desbordes, & Montgaillard, 2001). Nonetheless, as Downton and Pielke (2005) write, accounting for disaster losses does matter because decision makers use loss information as input to a range of important decisions. For ash oods in southern France, no complete and accurate report has been published about economic waste and especially about spatial distribution of losses. Accordingly, with all the assembled data, we aim to conduct a geographical survey of damage, in order to reveal discrepancies within territories faced with ood risk. After having described the main physical characteristics of the phenomenon, we shall study the economic losses, emphasizing the demonstration of spatial distribution of damage at a local scale. Finally, we shall discuss the relations between rainfall intensity and damage.

Two severe ash oods Meteorological aspects The Mediterranean basin is familiar with spectacular ash oods, already described in many publications (Alcoverro, Corominas, & Gomez, 1999; Belmonte & Beltran, 2001; Luino, 1999). The southern part of France, especially the region of Languedoc-Roussillon (28,000 km2) is regularly hard-hit by intense rainfalls that trigger an average annual toll of 10 fatalities and 150 millions of euros in damage. The ash oods examined here were both quite similar in their meteorological genesis and rainfall characteristics. Those heavy rains are due to mesoscale convective systems (Aullo et al., 2002; Bechtold & Bazile, 2001; Delrieu et al., 2005). The rst ash ooding event occurred in the Aude and nearby departments on 1213 November 1999; the second affected the Gard department and surroundings on 89 September 2002 (Fig. 1). In both cases, the total amount of rain exceeded 600 mm in some places and fell within 24 h. So, the daily rainfall measure includes nearly all the rain fallen during the whole event. We can estimate at 2000 million tons the amount of water fallen over the line of 200 mm (Vinet, 2000, 2003). Table 1 presents the

Fig. 1. Locations of November 1999 and September 2002 ood events.

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F. Vinet / Applied Geography 28 (2008) 323336 Table 1 Main gures for both catastrophic oods November 1999 Rainfall over 100 mm Over 200 mm Over 300 mm Over 400 mm Over 500 mm Maximum rainfall within 24 h Maximum rainfall within 48 h Number of communesa affected Number of inhabitants Sources: Neppel et al. (2001), Vinet (2003), Aullo et al. (2002). a The commune is the smallest administrative unit in France. 9000 km2 (?) 5700 km2 2300 km2 800 km2 150 km2 550 mm 621 mm 435 745,000 September 2002 7774 km2 4658 km2 3327 km2 1810 km2 720 km2 690 mm 690 mm 420 1,100,000 325

spatial characteristics of both events. The area which received more than 200 mm is about 5000 km2 in both cases. The highest intensities exceeded 100 mm h1. The return periods of local rainfalls are over 100 years in many places. Due to the short period of measurement, the accuracy of local return periods is weak. On the contrary, the return period of such meteorological events, considering the relationship between intensity and affected areas curves, depends on the chosen threshold (Neppel, Desbordes, & Masson, 1998). Although rainfalls over 200 mm are not so rare in Languedoc-Roussillon, the spatial extent of heavy rainfall has been quite uncommon. The study by Neppel, Bouvier, Desbordes, and Vinet (2003), based on a sample of 123 daily rainfall measurements selected for the period 1958 through 2002 over the Languedoc-Roussillon region (including the 2002 event) established an 80-year return period for both events if we consider the 200 mm isohyets area. The historical analysis conrms this point of view. In the Gard, the previous heavy rainfall events we can compare to 2002 were 1958, 1933 and 1907. For the Aude and nearby departments, we might cite October 1940, March 1930 and October 1891 as comparable catastrophic oods. Such historical oods are not often so strongly anchored in citizens minds as one might wish. Numerous marks of former oods attest that they are a part of the Mediterranean climate and the risk law adopted in France on 30 July 20031 obliges municipalities to hang ood marks on public buildings in order to maintain the memory of oods and public awareness. Hydrological characteristics of both events Such heavy rainfalls have caused strong runoff. Where stream gauges were not destroyed by the oods, some studies have calculated the peak discharges. Peak discharge and runoff have been studied by Gaume et al. (2004). In small watersheds (less than 20 km2), the peak discharges exceeded 10 m3/s/km2. A specic study on a small watershed (the Verdouble Basin) in the core of a ooded zone reported a 20 m3/s/km2 peak discharge. Areas where specic discharge values greater than 10 m3/s/km2 were observed fully match those having received rainfall amounts greater than 400 mm, state Gaume et al. (2004, p. 148). The 10 km2 Tournissan dry glen (in the Aude) has produced a 200 m3 s1 peak discharge. It means that some small rivers may cause strong and destructive stream ow. The return periods of such discharges are difcult to establish. Indeed, the smaller the area under study is, the higher is the uncertainty. For example, on the Berre River (in the Aude), only 12 years of recorded water levels are available. For the main basins located in the core of affected areas, the oods of 1999 (the Aude low basin) or 2002 (the Gardons and Vidourle basins) are the highest recorded levels since the beginning of ood discharge measurements. The existence of those little watersheds was sometimes unsuspected and not drawn on ood maps. Thus, damage is due not only to large rivers but also to strong runoff coming down from little watersheds; this explains the heavy damage on roads and networks. In the department of the Aude, 14 bridges and 29 water treatment centres were destroyed, mainly in narrow upper valleys.
1

As a consequence of both studied ood events.

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Geographical conditions It is important to know the topographical conditions to understand the type and the localisation of damage. The river basins are rather small. Except for big rivers such as the Rho ne in France, the Po in Italy or the Ebro in Spain that ow down from extra-Mediterranean regions, the Mediterranean regions are characterized by small watersheds (from 500 to 5000 km2) due to the relatively short distance between mountains and sea. In the Languedoc-Roussillon region, the distance between mountain ridge and sea is never more than 150 km. The Gard River watershed covers an area of 2500 km2. The largest one is the 4840 km2 Aude River watershed. The runoff of the tributaries of the Aude and Gard rivers begins on hills that are 5001500 m high. The high valleys are rather steep. Few people live there (the population density is around 20 inhabitants per km2), but roads and networks are obliged to follow the valley corridors. The strong declivity contributes to generating ash oods. Stream velocities of seven meters per second have been deduced from damage and testimonies. However, the hills are coved by deep bush that protects the slopes from landslides. Further downhill, the valleys become larger and the ood-prone zone is 5001000 m wide. Those are piedmonts where the density of population is higher (50100 habitants per km2) and grapes are the main crop. Proceeding downstream, the rivers leave the piedmonts and ow into low plains. In general, the water streams slowly between dikes. The speed of the water is slower (less than 1 m s1) and the peak discharge usually comes several hours, sometimes one day, after having affected the high part of the watershed. The plains are very wide and population density is high (over 150 inhabitants per km2) due to the presence of many towns and tourist accommodations. If forecasting and ood warnings are correctly done, people can protect themselves from the oods. Fatalities or heavy damage may occur only when dikes fail. In 1999 and 2002, many dikes did fail, and the oods overwhelmed hundreds of km2. Although the Gard and Aude events have similar meteorological and hydrological characteristics, they are quite different if we consider local vulnerability, as the analysis of damage will demonstrate. The assessment of damage Damage due to oods (as viewed in wide perspective) has been extensively studied in other countries (e.g., Downton, Miller, & Pielke (2005); Jonkman, Van Gelder, & Vrijling, 2003; Parker, Green, & Thompson, 1987; Penning-Rowsell & Chatterton, 1977) and categorisations of damage are numerous. Pielke (2000) and other authors show that considering all impacts of oods is not an obvious goal. The impacts of ooding might be separated into direct and indirect damage, secondary damage and intangible damage, and according to economic, social and environmental factors (Petersen, 1999). Parker (2000, p. 32) classies ood losses according to nine categories differencing tangible direct and indirect losses, and intangible losses. Then, he distinguishes primary, secondary and tertiary impacts. Following Parkers categorisation, we considered all tangible direct losses and some indirect losses where data were available (e.g., loss of income in industry). The estimates include losses to property, crops, and the cost of repairs to damaged infrastructure. We have excluded loss of life, physical injuries and psychological long-term consequences of oods, such as suicide or drug use. We did not, moreover, take into account any possible benets of oods. The rst rule is to work on actual data rather than estimates, but as Downton and Pielke (2005) state, loss estimates often become truth. Damage is nearly always overestimated just after the disasters. It is often necessary to wait for one or two years before collecting reliable data sets. All the data employed in the present paper are derived from actual sources. Nevertheless, even when one employs supposed actual costs, there remains the possibility of ambiguities, errors or omissions. Our aim is not to describe the well-known impacts due to torrential oods but to try to quantify them in nancial terms. For both cases studied, the gathering of data had been difcult and long. Data sets must be dealt with carefully. Thus, before explaining the damage, we might do a critical survey of the data and evaluate how accurate they are. Critical analysis of damage All elds of the economy and society suffer during torrential oods: agriculture and industries, shops, private housing, networks and infrastructures (electricity and phone networks, roads and railways). It is

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difcult to get an exhaustive and accurate assessment of damage in France unless the evaluation of damage is ` re de based on a sophisticated system of feedback analysis (EDATER, 2001; Ledoux & Hubert, 1999; Ministe veloppement Durable, 2004). lEcologie et du De The damage had rst been estimated during the weeks after the oods by certain services and organizations: insurance agents, chambers of commerce, the Ofce of Public Works, the Ofce of Agriculture and Forestry, or local authorities. Then, we controlled those estimates with data collected by all the subsidiary systems. The data sets are collected within departments2 which seldom coincide with the geography of oods (Fig. 1). For example in November 1999, the Aude department itself concentrated 60% of the damage, with the remaining 40% divided among three adjacent departments. During the years following the oods, many studies were made to collect data concerning losses. The different services and agencies that conducted loss surveys, however, did not coordinate their efforts, and their methods of collecting data were different. The following analysis underscores the precautions to keep in mind regarding the proper assessment of damage, as based on the work of Downton and Pielke (2005) on US disaster loss data. Unavailable data

  

Statistical secrets: Some organizations like insurance companies refuse to furnish data in order to protect their trade secrets. For private damage, insurers may give only overall data at departmental level. SNCF de France (EDF, i.e. the French public electrical (French National Railway Company) and Electricite utility) gave only general data without any geographical information. Thus, it was not possible to map losses to railways. The public databases (for example losses on crops) are submitted to a condentiality clause when damage affected fewer than three people per commune. Cost of data: Some data like aerial photos are expensive. This sometimes presents difculties for those wishing to conduct competent scientic research. Uncollected data: In France, there is no systematic research on fatalities resulting from such disasters. There are no systematic investigations regarding the psychological and long-term medical aftermaths of oods, although psychologists have studied certain particular cases. Liabilities that are unknown or too complicated: Losses on obsolescent former works like dikes, old oodwalls or channels are not assessed because the organization in charge can afford neither the maintenance nor the repair of such infrastructures. Sometimes title to the property has been lost, and no one knows to whom the works actually belong. In many cases, state and local authorities must substitute for the missing owners of private works. Two issues are particularly difcult to assess in monetary terms: The environment and human life (Jonkman et al., 2003). We did not include in our assessments the cost of human lives. With regard to the environment, the only data available concern waste on rivers, i.e. the cost of repairs to the banks.

False, approximate or poorly estimated data

Double count: We cross-referenced the different data sets to see whether a claim might be reckoned several times, for example by the state administration, the chamber of commerce, and insurers which conducted separate inquiries on ood damage. Overall assessments are available for all categories, but at the local level, only some data are known. Data are often unavailable because of a lack of coordination among services. For example, for the Gard event in 2002, it was not possible to collect data about damage to industries because of political opposition among the different local chambers of commerce. Methods and conditions of appraisal: Appraisal methods can be different, for example between the state administration and private companies. The primary problem is that both are obliged to appraise many losses in just a few weeks. Sometimes, the appraisal period is too short to assess properly all the losses, and the lack of qualied people to appraise damage during the days just following oods does not facilitate an accurate gathering of data in the shortest possible time.
Administrative level between commune and region.

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328 F. Vinet / Applied Geography 28 (2008) 323336 Table 2 Sources of ood damage data and spatial level accuracy Type of damage Data sources Kind of data Spatial accuracy for Aude 1999 event Communal level Departmental level Communal level Communal level Communal level Spatial accuracy for Gard 2002 event Communal level Departmental level Communal level Communal level Departmental level

List of affected communes Private damage Roads and networks Agriculture Industry

Government, GASPAR database Insurance companies Local and national authorities Public Ofce of Agriculture Chamber of commerce

Occurrence Value of damage Cost of reconstruction Value of damage Value of damage

Overestimated damage: Sometimes damage is over- or underestimated. During the oods of 2002 in the Gard, the losses for crops were at rst overestimated. A few weeks after the oods, a rst appraisal announced by newspapersstated a loss of 150 million euros loss for agriculture in the department. Eventually, that gure for the Gard was revised downward to 88 million euros, but one year had elapsed before the correct gure emerged. Underestimated value: That raises the problem of the value of furnishings, automobiles and housing. Even if people are in general satised with insurance indemnications, some of them contest the appraised amount of damage. Insurers only give indemnication data. But the difference between appraised damage and actually paid indemnication is sometimes large. According to studies conducted by insurers (EDATER, 2001), we apply a multiplicative coefcient (1.6) to the amount of indemnication in order to know the real amount of losses, for example to account for the part taken in charge by insured customers (the basic deductible in disaster insurance policies is 380 euros).3 In effect, when for each 100 euros paid out by insurance companies after a ood, the true amount of loss can be estimated at 160 euros.

Caution for temporal and spatial comparison Might the cost of the disaster be considered as the cost of reconstruction or as the value of all works and property destroyed? For example, for sewage systems, the cost of building a new water treatment centre exceeds the value of the former one. It is all the more expensive in that the new system is not rebuilt with the same norms. It is often impossible to assess the actual value of destroyed infrastructures. Thus, for public works (e.g., roads, bridges), the value taken into account is the cost of reconstruction. On the contrary, private losses are evaluated at time value. That means that the insurance expert estimated the value of the property (e.g., vehicles, furniture) at the moment of the ood. For agricultural, industrial and housing losses, the collected data sets are the value of destroyed chattels (Table 2). The second question is the comparison between the two events. As both oods occurred within a relatively short time, and the ination rate had not been very high between 1999 and 2002, we choose to keep actual data but, we shall nonetheless provide ination-adjusted data to compare 1999 and 2002. Between November 1999 and September 2002, overall ination had been +7% according to INSEE.4 We collected data at two spatial levels: the departments and the communes. The commune is the smallest administrative level in France and thus the smallest spatial unit to collect and to map data about oods damage. The average area of a commune is about 19 km2. The list of communes where damage was identied is commonly published by the government through various natural disaster decrees some days or sometimes several months after the oods. For the 1999 event, 435 communes spread over 222 km2 with 745,000 inhabitants underwent damage; for the 2002 event, there were 420 communes spread over 8352 km2 with 1,116,421 inhabitants (Table 1). For the rst event, the density of population is 90 inhabitants per km2; it rises
3 Damage to private property is covered by the 1982 law. A compensation is paid by insurance companies when the communes is declared in state of natural disaster by a decree of the government. 4 INSEE: Institut National de la Statistique et des Etudes Economiques. All indexes are available on www.insee.fr.

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to 134 for the Gard event. The population given is the whole population of the affected communes. It is impossible to know precisely the number of people really affected by the oods: rst, because ood zones are not all identied (especially in small watersheds); and second, because the last census does not provide data at the infra-communal level except for the communes that exceed 5000 inhabitants. The overall assessment of losses Overall losses and losses per capita The overall losses and their distribution by different kinds of damage are given in Table 3. Losses in 1999 totalled 771 million euros, and 1500 million euros in 2002 in the Gard. This difference is due to the higher density of population in the Gard. If we compare the damage and the populations of the affected regions, the loss per inhabitant was 1370 euros in the Gard and 1040 euros in the Aude (1110 euros for the latter in ination-adjusted 2002 euros). This difference is due mainly to industries, which are more prevalent in the Gard, especially near the Rho ne River. Excluding damage to industry, the cost of the ood per inhabitant was 926 euros in the Aude (991 euros in ination-adjusted 2002 euros) and 1066 in the Gard. These data underscore the economic weight of such torrential oods for the region (Table 3). An overview of losses The overall assessment shows that private damage was severe. It comprises about 50% of all losses. Damage to roads and networks is in both cases between 25% and 30% of the total. The cost to agriculture is 8% in both cases. The loss to industry is variable. It depends on the spatial distribution of factories, as we shall see on maps. Except for industry, the distribution of damage is quite the same in both cases. This reects the similar conditions of natural hazards (ash oods) and the same geographical conditions. Detailed analysis of damage by economic sectors According to the sources, we can categorise four kinds of damage:

   

Damage Damage Damage Damage

to to to to

private property (vehicles and houses). agriculture. public works and networks. industries.

Damage to private property Damage to private property concerns cars and housing. Only general data are available (departmental level). The average cost was 13,200 euros (672 million euros for 51,000 claims) in 2002. For the Aude event of 1999, the average cost of damage was 12,600 euros per claim (30,000 claims). Thus, we can see that corrected

Table 3 Distribution of damage by kind of damage Kind of damage Private damage (housing, vehicles) Roads and networks Agriculture Industry Total cost (millions of euros) Number of deaths Sources: see Table 2. Aude oods, 1999 (in %) 52 29 8 11 771 35 Gard oods, 2002 (in %) 44 25 8 22 1530 23

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with the ination rate, the data are quite similar. We note again that this amount is only the gure assumed by insurance companies. The actual cost to the people insured is 60% higher as explained earlier. Damage to agriculture Losses to agriculture had affected crops and plantations themselves. The data are rather reliable and precise. They were collected by the services of the Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry in order to distribute supplies to farmers according to the intensity of damage. The main crop is grapes in vineyards which suffered 6080% of the damage. Moreover, orchards and greenhouses were shattered by stream ows. The losses had been twice as heavy in the Gard in 2002 as in the Aude in 1999. Indeed, in the Gard, the oods occurred at the beginning of September 2002 when the grape harvest was still pending. At this time, vineyards are vulnerable and many winegrowers were not able to harvest their crops because the grapes were degraded and the elds infeasible to work in. Thus, the losses in crops (51 million euros) have exceeded losses in plantations (35 million euros). In the Aude, the ood occurred in November when all the crops had been harvested. Consequently, the major losses there were on plantations but not on crops, except some vegetables in greenhouses. That explains the difference in the amount of damage. Agricultural losses as a percentage of the total (8%) exceed the economic weight of agriculture in the region (4.5% of the gross regional product). This weight is rather weak, but as noted Hall et al. (2003), The loss (in agriculture) is very small in economic terms, but can represent considerable impact on the rural economy. The other impact in southern France is both political and psychosociological. Grapes are a traditional crop and the main source of income for agriculture. Winegrowers have great political weight and try to inuence politicians in order to receive subsides. That can explain why the amount of loss had at rst been exaggerated, as mentioned earlier. Damage to public works and networks Damage to public works concerns roads and railway networks, bridges, electricity, telephone, water processing, gas, sewage systems, etc. To these we must add all the damage along the rivers themselves (dikes and embankments, removal of branch dams, etc.). Fig. 2 shows the distribution of such losses in the Aude in 1999. Roads and bridges constitute over half the public losses to infrastructure. When a river destroys a road, it also destroys parallel networks such as the sewage system or the water supply (Fig. 3). After the 1999 ood

Others 9% Rivers 5%

Public buildings 9% Roads 47%

Water supply system 4%

Sewage system 10%

Rain draining system 5% Bridges 11%

Fig. 2. Distribution of losses to public works in the Aude (1999).

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` res (Aude) (photo: Vinet, 1999). Fig. 3. Road and networks shattered by the Berre River upstream near Durban-Corbie

buildings 20% loss of income 32%

tooling 22%

Stockpile and supply 26%

Fig. 4. Distribution of losses on industry in Tarn department (1999).

event, repairs to railways cost approximately 15 million euros, with over 6 million additional euros for navigable waterways. Damage to industry Using data provided by the Chamber of Commerce of the Department of the Tarn, we may divide losses to industries into four quite equal categories (Fig. 4). More than any other category of damage, damage to industry strongly depends on the location of the factories. While roads and houses are generally located throughout the region, factories are isolated in several industrial parks which concentrate vulnerability, as shown by the spatial analysis of losses.

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The geography of losses The spatial concentration of industry aggravates losses The damage to industries is deeply linked to the spatial distribution of factories. During the ood of November 1999, the losses were concentrated in the Tarn department (a northern neighbour of the Aude) River, two centuries ago (Fig. 5). After the where the old textile industry had built factories near the Thore previous catastrophic oods in March 1930, many oodwalls were built. They were unable to resist the recent oods. The textile industry was about to disappear, but new factories had been located on the same sites. The new industries no longer use the water of the river, but they still suffer from oods. It would be advisable to take advantage of the closing of textile factories by rehabilitating ood-prone areas. Some sites should be acquired and the land left as oodplain storage areas. River basin authorities are now implementing a valley. oodplain restoration program in the Thore The vulnerability of rural regions The studies of vulnerability and back analysis after disasters often focus on larger cities (Pelling, 2003). Nevertheless, recent disasters show that rural areas are often more vulnerable. This is true not only for oods but also for other natural hazards such as the October 2005 earthquake in Pakistan. Rural areas are not able to cope with huge natural disasters. In the case of oods in Mediterranean regions, the vulnerability of rural areas is rst due to the concentration of activities, networks and housing near the rivers, in deep and narrow ` res (with valleys, even though the overall density of population is not so high. In the village of Durban-Corbie 650 inhabitants, in the department of the Aude), the oods of November 1999 destroyed the re station, the police station, a supermarket, a service station, the water treatment centre, a school and a small industrial park. The amount of damage to public buildings reached 14 million euros, or 21,500 euros per inhabitant. On the other hand, the town of Ales suffered only 15,500,000 euros in losses for 40,000 inhabitants, or 387.5 euros per inhabitant. The second problem of small isolated villages is accessibility: some villages had to wait as long as four days after the ooding to receive assistance, because the only way to reach the village by land was

Fig. 5. Amount of damage to industries per commune for oods of 12th and 13th November 1999.

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destroyed by the oods. A third factor of vulnerability is the lack of nancial, human and material resources to organize emergency and recovery tasks. In order to use the amount of damage amount as a criterion of vulnerability, we calculated and mapped the amount of damage to public works, agriculture and industry (all damage except that to private housing) per inhabitant in each commune according the following equation: Linh Lp La Li =P, where Linh is the loss per inhabitant, Lp the loss to public works, La the loss to agriculture, Li the loss to industries, P the population of affected areas (by commune) in 1999. (No data available at communal level for losses to housing and vehicles.) The maximum exceeded 30,000 euros per capita in some rural communes. The map (Fig. 6) underscores the high vulnerability of small communes, where sometimes there are fewer than 100 people. Other communities, however, such as the small cities of Narbonne and Carcassonne, suffered far less, and are, all other factors being equal, less vulnerable. First, towns of over 10,000 inhabitants are often located in low plains and wide valleys. As was mentioned earlier, the main rainfall intensities had fallen upon hills and mountains upstream.

Fig. 6. Damage per capita for oods of 12th and 13th November 1999 (Aude and neighbour departments).

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5,000 km2

50 km

Ardche
Lozre Aveyron
25 0

Drme

20
m

10

Gard
Nmes

Tarn Hrault
Montpellier

Vaucluse
Nice

Bouches-du-Rhne

Aude
Pyr. Orientales

Moreover, the stream is relatively slow in low plains (under 2 m s1). Unless towns are prone to local runoff due to the increased presence of impermeable surfaces, damage is due mostly to direct immersion rather than destruction by the stream. At last, if we consider the ratio cost/population, the cases of the oods in the Gard and the Aude show that the cost of natural disasters can be very expensive in rural, sparsely populated areas. Discussion and perspectives: the relationship between rainfall and damage To rene our explanation of damage, and especially to explain the spatial discrepancies of vulnerability, it is important to study the relationship between rainfall and damage (Fig. 7). Many studies have been conduct in this eld considering the relation between loss and the high-water mark of a ood. Such a relation is possible only at the local level. At the regional level, we would like to test the relationship between losses and the intensity of rainfall. It is difcult to analyse the relationship between rainfall and damage. First of all, the damage is not linked directly to rain but, rather, to hydrological conditions that are specic to each river. Moreover, it is difcult to compare agricultural losses with rainfall, because the types of damage are different (e.g., soil erosion, crops lost, debris brought by streams). The list of communes affected by ooding is published by the government after each disaster and recorded in an online database called GASPAR.5 For the 1999 and 2002 oods, we have compared the spatial distribution of affected communes and the rainfall measured over 24 h. In low plains near the sea, the relationship between rainfall and damage is not revealing. Damage is rather due to uvial ooding and breaches of dikes. In, in small watersheds upstream, however, losses are closely correlated to rainfall intensity. The geography of the affected regions is roughly linked to rainfalls that exceeded 150 or 200 mm per day.
5

See on www.prim.net website.

10 0m m

Fig. 7. Relationship between 24 h rainfall depth and damage.

200 mm

Marseille

Perpignan

"communes" affected by floods in November 1999 the 12th and 13th "communes" affected by floods in September 2002 the 8th and 9th 24-hours rainfall depth
F. Vinet Source : Meteo-France, Gaspar database MEDAD

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The rainfall damage threshold s varies throughout the region. In the departments of the Gard or the Herault and near the Pyrenees, it appears to be between 200 and 250 mm, whereas the critical level for 24-h of rainfall is clearly lower150 mmin the Aude. We may state that rainfall and its subsequent runoff trigger damage at different levels. This variability can be explained by the predominance of limestone in some watersheds (Gaume et al., 2004). At a local level, the presence of karst can explain the lack of runoff. Moreover, for like levels of discharge, we can suppose that the vulnerability of infrastructures differs among the core Mediterranean regions and the surrounding regions. The major hypothesis to explain this gradient of vulnerability is the historical adaptability of the works at risk (e.g., roads, bridges). In the Gard and in the Pyrenees, rainfalls are more frequent and more intense, as many studies demonstrate (Llasat, Barriendos, Barrera, & Rigo, 2005; Neppel, 1997). In the Aude and in eastern or northern departments (Dro me, Vaucluse, Tarn, Aveyron), the average intensity of damaging rainfall is lower. Our hypothesis is that, throughout history, engineers have tacitly adapted the building norms to the characteristics of the watersheds. This perspective merits further analysis, comparing the rainfall damage thresholds for other vulnerable entities such as housing. Finally, these case studies show that ood damage is not always triggered by the same amount of rainfall. We do not yet have sufcient data to reach a conclusion. Back analysis of future oods may conrm this point of view. Conclusion The difculties in collecting accurate and homogenous data sets partially explain the lack of geographical studies of ood damage on regional and local scales in France. Nevertheless, geographers must show the territorial discrepancies regarding these disasters in order to inuence the decision makers in charge of disaster prevention. This study provides the rst local-scale mapping of losses for two major ash ood events in France. We note rstly that territorial discrepancies are substantial with regard to losses to industry and agriculture: the former for high spatial concentrations of factories; the latter for different levels of exposure depending on the harvest period. The higher level of ood loss in the Gard is due to the presence of factories in oodplains and the occurrence of ooding before the grape harvest. Secondly, rural regions are socially and economically vulnerable to torrential ooding. They depend heavily on public infrastructures (roads, bridges) for accessibility after a disaster. In isolated villages, considering the sparse population, the total average tangible loss per inhabitant is very high, and very difcult to endure for such small communities.

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