When moderate storms become Disasters: Operationalising the co-production of flood hazard in Iraq

Iraq’s most damaging floods do not always follow extraordinary rainfall. They emerge when hydroclimatic forcing interacts with rapidly changing socio-environmental conditions that shape how water is absorbed, routed, and controlled. Drawing on national-scale geospatial analysis of flood hazard and exposure, a 66-year precipitation dataset (1950–2016), a database of 22 major flood events (2006–2024), and over 30 semi-structured interviews, this paper operationalises the co-production of flood hazard in a fragile setting. Results show that rapid, insufficiently planned urban expansion, loss of natural drainage pathways, and chronic underinvestment in stormwater infrastructure have increased runoff and made inundation outcomes highly sensitive to system performance during storms. This dynamic is most consequential in densely populated floodplain corridors, where displacement risk clusters. At the same time, governance gaps and overlapping mandates limit operational capacity at the critical moment rainfall arrives, reinforcing reactive crisis management. In turn, coping measures that reduce immediate losses can also redirect runoff and alter local flow paths, reshaping future hazard conditions. By integrating geospatial and qualitative evidence, the study advances an operational understanding of flood hazard that goes beyond hydroclimatic assessment and engineering solutions, placing greater emphasis on the socio-environmental processes that determine when and where storms become disasters. The Iraq case contributes to a growing body of work on hazard co-production in fragile and rapidly changing environments.