Managing vulnerabilities to multiple water hazards in Sweden

This fact sheet describes 'HydroHazards', a five-year interdisciplinary project (2020-2024) funded by the Swedish Civil Contingencies Agency and FORMAS. The project aims to evaluate damages caused by multiple water hazards in Sweden and provide policy recommendations for mitigation and adaptation, specifically focusing on Critical Societal Services and Infrastructure (CSSIs).

• The HydroHazards project addresses a gap in traditional risk analyses, which typically focus on single events and fail to account for the interconnected web of connections between multiple hazards. The project posits that the combination of two moderate hazards can result in significantly worse impacts than a single severe hazard.
• The project focuses on 'multiple hydrometeorological hazards'—events that occur cumulatively, cascadingly, or simultaneously. In the context of Sweden, these primarily include coastal surges, small-scale cloudbursts, heavy and persistent large-scale rainfall, and peak river flow and snowmelt.
• A central goal of the project is to examine the vulnerability of Critical Societal Services and Infrastructure (CSSIs), defined as facilities, services, nodes, and infrastructures essential for maintaining societal functions or managing crises. The project argues that impacts from multiple hazards are expected to increase as dependency on and vulnerability of these CSSIs grow.
• The project identifies a lack of historical records regarding water-related disasters in Sweden, noting that hazards have traditionally only been classified as disasters if they resulted in deaths or severe economic losses. This necessitates an assessment of present and future social vulnerabilities rather than relying solely on historical data.
• HydroHazards utilizes a co-creation and interdisciplinary approach across three work packages: assessing hotspots of multiple water hazards and exposures, assessing differentiated vulnerabilities among populations and CSSIs, and developing risk scenarios for future climates to identify policy gaps and response mechanisms.

APA

Stockholm Environment Institute (2020). Managing vulnerabilities to multiple water hazards in Sweden. https://www.sei.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/03/factsheet-hydrohazards.pdf

Chicago

Stockholm Environment Institute. Managing vulnerabilities to multiple water hazards in Sweden. 2020. https://www.sei.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/03/factsheet-hydrohazards.pdf.

Wikipedia

{{cite report |author=Stockholm Environment Institute |title=Managing vulnerabilities to multiple water hazards in Sweden |date=March 2020 |url=https://www.sei.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/03/factsheet-hydrohazards.pdf |access-date=17 August 2026 |via=Climate Insights Directory}}

BibTeX

@techreport{stockholmenvironmentinstitute2020managing, author = {{Stockholm Environment Institute}}, title = {{Managing vulnerabilities to multiple water hazards in Sweden}}, institution = {Stockholm Environment Institute}, year = {2020}, month = mar, url = {https://www.sei.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/03/factsheet-hydrohazards.pdf}, urldate = {2026-08-17}, note = {Indexed by Climate Insights Directory} }