Housing bubbles and the increase of flood exposure. Failures in flood risk management on the Spanish south-eastern coast (1975–2013)

In recent decades, there has been a significant increase in economic losses caused by flood events on the coastal region of south-eastern Spain. The increase of extreme rainfall events forecast by the climate change models is currently not reflected in the statistics which suggests that the principal cause is due to the exposure experienced within the past 40 years. Consequently, it is interesting to evaluate the effect of urban growth in flood-prone areas and the role played by government institutions in mitigating the increase in exposure. For this study, the cadastral information and the hydrological modelling data for the return periods of 10, 50, 100 and 500 years were used. This allows high-resolution spatial–temporal results to be obtained that show one of the most significant growths in exposure in Spain and Europe, as well as the low efficiency that risk mitigation measures have had.