A two-year project to map France’s plains and river systems has culminated in the country’s first comprehensive flood map.

The flood model incorporates 80,000km of river systems across 43 urban regions to provide insurers and reinsurers with the most accurate set of flood hazard maps ever assembled for France.

Announcement of the flood model – a joint project of reinsurance broker Guy Carpenter, hydrologist JBA Consulting and geographer Intermap Technologies – was announced last week at the same time as 19 people were killed by flash floods across southern France.

The latest floods arrive only four months after the worst storm to strike France in a decade swept through central and western France in February, killing more than 50 people and cutting power to a million homes.

Guy Carpenter European Operations CEO Nick Frankland says the new model represents a “major step forward in our understanding of flood risk across France”.

Mr Frankland says the model incorporates data from 14 previous French floods.