Flood hazard for developed areas and people: a pan-Russian assessment

Description This dataset provides a country-wide assessment of riverine flood hazard for Russia at municipality level. Flood hazard is taken from the Joint Research Centre (JRC) global flood hazard maps for the 100-year return period (1% annual exceedance probability). Pavlyukevich and Derkacheva (2026) compared that product with 26 historical flood events in Russia over the past 30 years. Performance, and the limits of the JRC chain are reported in that paper and in the accompanying manuscript. For each municipality we report flood hazard in three ways. First, we report the share of the municipality’s total area inside the hazard zone, following the approach used for regional Climate Change Adaptation Plans (Order No. 267 of the Ministry of Economic Development, 2021). Second, we report the share of occupied territory inside the hazard zone. Occupied territory is settlements with a 5 km buffer, combined with the road network. Third, we report the number and the share of residents inside the hazard zone. The table is intended for regional Climate Change Adaptation Plans, for national and regional flood exposure comparisons, and for spatial planning. It does not report flood depth, damage, or vulnerability. Data and methods The full processing steps are present in the accompanying paper. The inputs used to build the table are listed below: Flood hazard. JRC global river flood hazard maps, 100-year return period (Dottori et al., 2016, 2022). The maps are derived from the GloFAS-ERA5 hydrological reanalysis (1979 to 2022) and from LISFLOOD-FP simulations at 90 m on the MERIT Hydro digital elevation model. The hazard zone is the 100-year flood extent from that map (Baugh et al., 2026). Administrative boundaries. Municipality polygons from the HSE University Geospatial Center (https://geoportal.hse.ru/portal/apps/sites/#/geodata/datasets/26ca86e88e72421c8ccb8938cf655bc3/about). Moscow and Saint Petersburg are kept as single municipality-equivalent units, without their internal divisions. The layer contains 2,301 municipalities in 83 federal subjects. The paper maps only municipalities for which boundary data were available. Occupied territory. Settlement polygons from OpenStreetMap (accessed on May 2025) buffered by 5 km, combined with the road network from the Road Fund Control System (https://скдф.рф/roads, accessed on January 2026). Population. The 100 m population grid of Sheludkov et al. (2025), based on GHS-POP (Schiavina et al., 2023) and adjusted to the 2020/2021 Russian census (https://geoportal.hse.ru/portal/home/item.html?id=9ee9d4ad2b124f82949f9f061e0b42c9, accessed on February 2026). Dataset structure The deposit is one GeoPackage layer, russia_flood_mun_fin_eng.gpkg, with 2,301 municipality polygons. The polygons are stored in the WGS 84 / Pseudo-Mercator projection (EPSG:3857). The area fields are true areas in km². fid is the GeoPackage feature identifier. It identifies a row in this file. It should not be used as a municipality code in a later version. Ratios in the table are: areaLiveF = areaLive / area sTotFrac = sTot / area sLiveFrac = sLive / areaLive rNF_pop is the share of the municipality population that falls inside the hazard zone. Population is summed from the 100 m population grid with area weighting: each cell contributes to a polygon in proportion to the share of the cell area that falls inside it. Zero values in the table are not missing data (the layer contains no empty fields). A zero in a ratio field means that the corresponding quantity is absent in the source data: areaLiveF = 0: the municipality has no occupied territory; sTotFrac = 0: no flood zone falls inside the municipality; sLiveFrac = 0: the occupied territory of the municipality is not flooded; rNF_pop = 0: the source population data record no residents in the hazard zone. English names in region_nam_eng, fed_distr_eng, municipal_short_eng, and municipal_long_eng follow the BGN/PCGN romanization of Russian, except for established English exonyms (Moscow, Saint Petersburg) and official English region and federal district names, which are used where applicable. 1. Municipality description Field Alias Units Description fid Feature ID integer Unique feature identifier in this GeoPackage. region_nam Region text (Russian) Name of the federal subject (region) the municipality belongs to. region_nam_eng Region (English) text (English) English name of the federal subject. fed_distr Federal district text (Russian) Name of the federal district the region belongs to. fed_distr_eng Federal district (English) text (English) English name of the federal district. municipal_short Municipality, short name text (Russian) Short name of the municipality. municipal_short_eng Municipality, short name (English) text (English) Transliterated short name of the municipality. municipal_long Municipality, full name text (Russian) Full name of the municipality, including the type of municipal formation. municipal_long_eng Municipality, full name (English) text (English) English full name of the municipality. area Total area km² Total land area of the municipality. areaLive Occupied area km² Area of occupied territory: settlements with a 5 km buffer and the road network. areaLiveF Occupied area fraction (0 to 1) Share of occupied territory in the municipality total area (areaLive / area). 2. Spatial exposure Field Alias Units Description sTot Exposed area, whole territory km² Area of the municipality inside the 100-year flood hazard zone. sTotFrac Exposed area, whole territory fraction (0 to 1) Share of the municipality total area inside the flood hazard zone (sTot / area). sLive Exposed area, occupied territory km² Area of occupied territory inside the flood hazard zone. sLiveFrac Exposed area, occupied territory fraction (0 to 1) Share of occupied territory inside the flood hazard zone (sLive / areaLive). 3. Hazard categories and population exposure Field Alias Units Description hNormTot Hazard category, whole territory category (Russian) Hazard category from the share of the municipality total area inside the hazard zone (total area in hazard area, TAiHA). hNormTot_eng Hazard category, whole territory (English) category (English) English equivalent of hNormTot. hNormLive Hazard category, occupied territory category (Russian) Hazard category from the share of occupied territory inside the hazard zone (exposure area in hazard area, EAiHA). hNormLive_eng Hazard category, occupied territory (English) category (English) English equivalent of hNormLive. rNiHA_pop Population in hazard zone hundreds of people Residents inside the flood hazard zone (people in hazard area, PiHA), stored in hundreds of people. Area-weighted sum of the 100 m population grid over the hazard zone. rNF_pop Population in hazard zone fraction (0 to 1) Share of the municipality population inside the flood hazard zone (people fraction in hazard area, PFiHA). Five hazard categories are used, with the same breaks for hNormTot and hNormLive. The breaks follow Order No. 267 (Ministry of Economic Development, 2021). In the accompanying paper the same classes are abbreviated NH, MH, H, HH, and EH. Exposed share hNormTot and hNormLive hNormTot_eng and hNormLive_eng Abbreviation more than 50% очень опасно extremely hazardous EH 25% to 50% весьма опасно highly hazardous HH 15% to 25% опасно hazardous H 10% to 15% умеренно опасно moderately hazardous MH less than 10% неопасно non-hazardous NH This note describes the municipality table deposited with the paper "Flood hazard for developed areas and people: a pan-Russian assessment", submitted to Natural Hazards (Springer) and currently under review. Recommended dataset citation: Pavlyukevich E., Derkacheva A., Tsyplenkov A. (2026). Flood hazard for developed areas and people: municipality table for Russia (version 0.1) [dataset]. Zenodo.