Impact of flood exposure on emergency responses for health services in Sweden

flooding in urban environment — Photo: Pixabay

Compared to other parts of the world, Sweden is relatively less prone to extreme weather events, but has also experienced an uptick in flooding incidents, such as the extensive floods in summer 2023. Floods and other hazards are increasingly relevant to Swedish authorities from a resilience and social vulnerability perspective. Further, they threaten progress toward Sweden’s achievement of the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). This project investigates the resilience of health service provision to extreme flood events in Sweden.

This is a collaborative project within the initiative Stockholm Trio for Sustainable Action. The project, focuses on quantifying the impacts of extreme flood events on health and wellbeing. The project uses information on emergency response times as a means to measure acute disruption caused by extreme flood events. The emergency dispatch times also provide an indication of how fast the emergency services respond to incidents. These are further matched spatially and temporally to flood event(s) to estimate impacts. Overall, the main project goals are to: (1) Empirically assess, using modelled spatial data and relevant data from Swedish health authorities, the relation between flooding and health provision disruptions in the Swedish context; (2) Understand the direct and broader impacts of extreme flood events on Sweden’s SDG progress through relevant targets and indicators linked to health outcomes; (3) Inform adaptation measures to optimise emergency preparedness and continency plans at local or municipal levels. The project team includes strong expertise on the interlinkages of floods and health, quantitatively and through quantitative assessment.