A Comprehensive Systematic Review of Contemporary Geospatial Approaches to Flood Hazard and Risk Assessment

Source abstract

Due to climate change and its increased variability, as well as the extreme weather events, flooding is becoming a major natural threat causing profound economic, social, and ecological impact. This paper systematically reviews 89 peer-reviewed articles published between 2010 and 2024 on flood risk assessment approaches, including geospatial techniques and methods for flooding, using the PRISMA framework and the ScienceDirect and Web of Science databases. GIS and remote sensing are the most popular tools for flood hazard mapping, and hydrodynamic models such as HEC-RAS and MIKE FLOOD dominate flood simulation. Machine learning algorithms, multi-criteria decision analysis (MCDA), and climate scenario analysis have also emerged as increasingly prominent methodological contributions to flood risk frameworks. This review makes a novel contribution by providing the first systematic synthesis of geospatial flood risk assessment methods, explicitly quantifying both the urban–rural research imbalance and the degree of hazard, vulnerability, and exposure integration across the literature. Specifically, only 13 (2.7%) of all eligible articles addressed rural flooding, despite the profound socioeconomic impacts that disproportionately affect these communities, and only 16% of included studies integrated any combination of hazard, vulnerability, and exposure components within current assessment approaches. This review highlights the importance of interdisciplinary collaboration and sensitivity to rural contexts in cultivating resilience and fostering equitable flood risk management.