Title: Human migration and floods in the world
Presenter: Kaoru Kakinuma
 
Abstract: 
Estimation of potential human migration that associate with climate changes are one of the most 
important topics in the world.  Human migration has been studied well by social sciences, and conducted 
mainly at regional scale. However, there are few knowledge how natural factors affect human migration 
and which country has high potential of that.  Thus, I and co-authors examine the relationship among 
human internal migration and flooded areas and economic condition in the world.
 
We used data of flooded areas that were calculated by using a global river and inundation model, human 
internal migration data that are provided by Internal Displacement Monitoring Center, and GDP as an 
economic indicator of each country. We conducted a Generalized Linear Mixed Model (GLMM) to examine 
how flooded intensity and economic condition affect the human internal migration.
 
The number of human internal migration that caused by flood had been high in African, South/South-
eastern countries during 2008-2016. The result of GLMM showed that the flood intensity(anomaly of 
flooded areas) and the interaction of the flood intensity and the economic condition would affect the 
human migration. We suggest that the impact of floods on human migration is high especially in lower 
economic countries.