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Rising global flood risk and its societal impacts are being driven by a complex interplay of factors including heavy precipitation, sea-level rise, population growth, and anthropogenic activities. Satellite evidence shows human exposure in flood-prone areas has risen markedly, underscoring the need to separate changes in hazard from exposure and vulnerability. While consensus on these general drivers is growing, critical research gaps limit our predictive capabilities and the development of effective and efficient adaptation strategies. This session confronts the major open questions in global flood science.

Key themes include: 1) Attribution uncertainty: Quantifying the relative contributions of climate, land use, and socio-economic factors to flood trends. 2) Compound flooding: Understanding the interplay of causative mechanisms and modeling interactions between riverine, coastal, and pluvial flood drivers that amplify risks. 3) Vulnerability, risk and adaptation: Assessing how vulnerability and risk vary with socioeconomics, and the effectiveness of adaptation strategies. 4) Data gaps: Overcoming scarce flood records and limited data, particularly in the global south and in developing regions, by leveraging new satellite- and AI-supported flood mapping and risk analytics.

Addressing these challenges requires a coordinated global effort. This session is inspired by the initiatives like the GEWEX Flood Crosscutting (CC) Initiative, which synthesizes flood research on a global scale. We encourage contributions that leverage open-data practices and benchmarking of global hydrologic/hydrodynamic models to identify opportunities for collaboration to advance our understanding of flood processes and its impacts.

We invite contributions from all domains and knowledge partners, especially those that connect regional-scale processes to global flood dynamics and those seeking to develop international partnership