The Occurrence of Catastrophic Multiple-Fatality Flash Floods in the Eastern Mediterranean Region

Despite recent technological advances, many parts of the world continue to experience flood disasters accompanied by significant loss human lives. Understanding how frequent these deadly catastrophes are creates uncertainties, especially in areas where disaster records scarce or have short timeframes. It is, however, very important from a preparedness and civil protection standpoint assess frequency such high-mortality events, considering threat climate change. This work develops event database using multiple international sources, covering relatively long time window (1882–2021), exploring deadliest floods Eastern Mediterranean region, examining their seasonal distribution, temporal evolution, basic spatial patterns. The study identifies 132 flash events (causing ≥10 fatalities) with return period only 1.56 years. Additionally, higher-magnitude (>85th percentile) were found be less common but still not rare (return = 9.1 years). number shows an increase decades, while patterns identified as well. Overall, findings provide foundation for understanding catastrophic beneficial policymakers relevant professionals, stepping stone towards complete extreme changed last century will change near future.