It’s already possible to create Events for a given Place and Date(s) without any People attached to them, and @Mattkmmr suggested a new timeline report to include such Events.
I think it would be good if such a report could also recognize when a Place is enclosed by more than one other Place. Suppose currently a town is enclosed by a county which is enclosed by a state, etc. Now suppose the town were also enclosed by a Place representing a watershed (“Lower Mississippi River”) enclosed by a broader geographical category, etc., eventually enclosed by a continent and then the planet. This would be useful for locating natural events, such as floods, that may occur in areas spanning multiple parts of a typical (political) Place hierarchy.
Then I could have a “Flood” event linked to a such a geographical Place, and the report could identify the people living in all of the the political Places which are directly or indirectly enclosed by the geographical place.
I think this does not require any new functionality; a Place can already be enclosed by more than one other Place. It just requires reports to make use of the information. Of course, it also requires some knowledge and discretion for deciding which political places are enclosed by which geographical places. For example, I could say it’s good enough for my purposes to say that particular states are enclosed by a watershed, or with more effort I could do it at the county or even the township level. Personally I would only do it as needed to support whatever events I am interested in. (And only if there were a report available!)