14 Mar 2025
| 14 Mar 2025
Preface
Christophe Lienert
Secretariat Steering Committee Intervention in Natural Hazards LAINAT, c/o Swiss Federal Office for the Environment FOEN, Switzerland
Andreas Paul Zischg
Mobiliar Lab for Natural Risks, Oeschger Centre for Climate Change Research, Institute of Geography, University of Bern, Bern, Switzerland
Horst Kremers
RIMMA CoE, Berlin, Germany
Jamie McCaughey
Department of Environmental Systems Science, ETH Zurich, Zurich, Switzerland
Lara Zinkl
Mobiliar Lab for Natural Risks, Oeschger Centre for Climate Change Research, Institute of Geography, University of Bern, Bern, Switzerland
David N. Bresch
Department of Environmental Systems Science, ETH Zurich, Zurich, Switzerland
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Samuel Eberenz, Samuel Lüthi, and David N. Bresch
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Christoph Welker, Thomas Röösli, and David N. Bresch
Nat. Hazards Earth Syst. Sci., 21, 279–299, https://doi.org/10.5194/nhess-21-279-2021, https://doi.org/10.5194/nhess-21-279-2021, 2021
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David N. Bresch and Gabriela Aznar-Siguan
Geosci. Model Dev., 14, 351–363, https://doi.org/10.5194/gmd-14-351-2021, https://doi.org/10.5194/gmd-14-351-2021, 2021
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Climate change is a fact and adaptation a necessity. The Economics of Climate Adaptation methodology provides a framework to integrate risk and reward perspectives of different stakeholders, underpinned by the CLIMADA impact modelling platform. This extended version of CLIMADA enables risk assessment and options appraisal in a modular form and occasionally bespoke fashion yet with high reusability of functionalities to foster usage in interdisciplinary studies and international collaboration.
Daniela Molinari, Anna Rita Scorzini, Chiara Arrighi, Francesca Carisi, Fabio Castelli, Alessio Domeneghetti, Alice Gallazzi, Marta Galliani, Frédéric Grelot, Patric Kellermann, Heidi Kreibich, Guilherme S. Mohor, Markus Mosimann, Stephanie Natho, Claire Richert, Kai Schroeter, Annegret H. Thieken, Andreas Paul Zischg, and Francesco Ballio
Nat. Hazards Earth Syst. Sci., 20, 2997–3017, https://doi.org/10.5194/nhess-20-2997-2020, https://doi.org/10.5194/nhess-20-2997-2020, 2020
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Flood risk management requires a realistic estimation of flood losses. However, the capacity of available flood damage models to depict real damages is questionable. With a joint effort of eight research groups, the objective of this study was to compare the performances of nine models for the estimation of flood damage to buildings. The comparison provided more objective insights on the transferability of the models and on the reliability of their estimations.
Samuel Eberenz, Dario Stocker, Thomas Röösli, and David N. Bresch
Earth Syst. Sci. Data, 12, 817–833, https://doi.org/10.5194/essd-12-817-2020, https://doi.org/10.5194/essd-12-817-2020, 2020
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The modeling of economic disaster risk on a global scale requires high-resolution maps of exposed asset values. We have developed a generic and scalable method to downscale national asset value estimates proportional to a combination of nightlight intensity and population data. Here, we present the methodology together with an evaluation of its performance for the subnational downscaling of GDP. The resulting exposure data for 224 countries and the open-source Python code are available online.
Gabriela Aznar-Siguan and David N. Bresch
Geosci. Model Dev., 12, 3085–3097, https://doi.org/10.5194/gmd-12-3085-2019, https://doi.org/10.5194/gmd-12-3085-2019, 2019
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The need for assessing the risk of weather events is ever increasing. In addition to quantification of risk today, the role of aggravating factors such as population growth and changing climate conditions matter too. We present the open-source software CLIMADA, which integrates hazard, exposure, and vulnerability to compute metrics to assess risk and to quantify socio-economic impact, and use it to estimate and contextualize the damage of hurricane Irma through the Caribbean in 2017.
Philipp Angehrn, Sabina Steiner, and Christophe Lienert
Abstr. Int. Cartogr. Assoc., 1, 12, https://doi.org/10.5194/ica-abs-1-12-2019, https://doi.org/10.5194/ica-abs-1-12-2019, 2019
Elisabeth Maidl, David N. Bresch, and Matthias Buchecker
Nat. Hazards Earth Syst. Sci. Discuss., https://doi.org/10.5194/nhess-2018-393, https://doi.org/10.5194/nhess-2018-393, 2019
Publication in NHESS not foreseen
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Natural hazard risk management today aims to involve all actors possibly affected by damage. Citizens are regarded as responsible actors in risk mitigation. Practitioners therefore face the challenge of building social capacity towards such a culture of risk. Research on capacity building in Alpine countries, however, so far lacks empirical evidence on individual preparedness in the common population. This study for the first time provides insights for research and practice.
Veronika Röthlisberger, Andreas P. Zischg, and Margreth Keiler
Nat. Hazards Earth Syst. Sci., 18, 2431–2453, https://doi.org/10.5194/nhess-18-2431-2018, https://doi.org/10.5194/nhess-18-2431-2018, 2018
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We investigate the role of building value estimation schemes within flood exposure analyses on regional to national scales. Our results for Switzerland suggest that models based on individual buildings produce more reliable results than models based on surface area, but only if they consider the buildings' volume. Simple models tend to underestimate the exposure, which results in suboptimal allocation of resources for protection measures in decision making processes based on cost efficiency.
Andreas Paul Zischg, Guido Felder, Rolf Weingartner, Niall Quinn, Gemma Coxon, Jeffrey Neal, Jim Freer, and Paul Bates
Hydrol. Earth Syst. Sci., 22, 2759–2773, https://doi.org/10.5194/hess-22-2759-2018, https://doi.org/10.5194/hess-22-2759-2018, 2018
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We developed a model experiment and distributed different rainfall patterns over a mountain river basin. For each rainfall scenario, we computed the flood losses with a model chain. The experiment shows that flood losses vary considerably within the river basin and depend on the timing of the flood peaks from the basin's sub-catchments. Basin-specific characteristics such as the location of the main settlements within the floodplains play an additional important role in determining flood losses.
Tobias Geiger, Katja Frieler, and David N. Bresch
Earth Syst. Sci. Data, 10, 185–194, https://doi.org/10.5194/essd-10-185-2018, https://doi.org/10.5194/essd-10-185-2018, 2018
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Tropical cyclones (TCs) pose a major risk to societies worldwide but very limited data exist on their socioeconomic impacts. Here, we apply a common wind field model to comprehensively and consistently estimate the number of people and the sum of assets exposed by all TCs between 1950 and 2015. This information is crucial to assess changes in societal vulnerabilites, to calibrate TC damage functions, and to make risk data more accessible to non-experts and stakeholders.
S. Fuchs, M. Keiler, and A. Zischg
Nat. Hazards Earth Syst. Sci., 15, 2127–2142, https://doi.org/10.5194/nhess-15-2127-2015, https://doi.org/10.5194/nhess-15-2127-2015, 2015
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A spatially explicit object-based temporal assessment of buildings and citizens exposed to natural hazards in Austria is presented, including elements at risk of river flooding, torrential flooding, and snow avalanches. It is shown that the repeatedly stated assumption of increasing losses due to continued population growth and related increase in assets has to be opposed to the local development of building stock, which is spatially and temporally variable.
