Disasters and climate change: analyses and methods for projecting future losses from extreme weather

Vellinga, P. [Promotor]Aerts, J.C.J.H. [Promotor

Have disaster losses increased due to anthropogenic climate change?

A number of studies were conducted to demonstrate the best way to assess the potential influence of climate change on disaster losses was to analyze future projections in place of historical data. These studies showed that increases in exposure and wealth were the most important drivers for growing disaster losses. Most of these studies also showed that disaster losses remained constant after normalization, including losses from earthquakes They found that increases after normalization did not fully correct for wealth and population increases, or they identified other sources of exposure increases or vulnerability changes or changing environmental conditions. The analysis of these disaster loss studies showed that economic losses from various weather-related natural hazards, such as storms, tropical cyclones, floods, and small-scale weather events had increased around the globe

Catalogue of programmes and policies related to regional development and infrastructure ("Baseline assessment")

A baseline assessment, an impact and vulnerability assessment of EU investments in infrastructure and a mitigation potential analysis shall help to generate policy options, which will be appraised in the subsequent phase of the project. In this report we set the stage for the further tasks. The report identifies critical questions and resulting implications concerning the assessment of impacts and vulnerability of infrastructure and infrastructure investments in the EU; describes EU Cohesion Policy; o details the current design of the Structural Funds; describes the issue of environmental and climate change mainstreaming from an EU perspective; presents an exploratory analysis of evidence for climate policy integration based on Member States National Strategic Reference Frameworks (NSRFs); and finally addresses the main research and knowledge gaps that will be addressed in subsequent research within this work package

Inundation scenarios for flood damage evaluation in polder areas

We present an approach for flood damage simulations through the creation of a comparatively large number of inundation scenarios for a polder area, using a high-resolution digital elevation model. In particular, the method could be used for detailed scenario studies of the impact of future socioeconomic and climatic developments on flood risks. The approach is applied to a case-study area in the south of the Netherlands along the river Meuse. The advantage of our approach is that a large number of potential flood events can be created relatively fast without hydrodynamical calculations, and that it can be applied to high-resolution elevation models and for large areas. The large number of flood scenarios and the high horizontal resolution reduces at least part of the uncertainties encountered in flood loss modelling. The approach with a low horizontal-resolution (100-m) for loss modelling results in an overestimation of losses by up to 22% for high density urban areas, and underestimation of 100% for infrastructure, compared to the high-resolution (25-m). Loss modelling at 5-m horizontal resolution shows that aggregate losses may be overestimated by some 4.3%, compared to the 25-m resolution. The generation of a large variety of inundation scenarios provides a basis for constructing loss probability curves. The calculated range and expected values of damages compare reasonably well with earlier independent estimates

Detecting the long-term impacts from climate variability and increasing water consumption on runoff in the Krishna river basin (India)

Variations in climate, land-use and water consumption can have profound effects on river runoff. There is an increasing demand to study these factors at the regional to river basin-scale since these effects will particularly affect water resources management at this level. This paper presents a method that can help to differentiate between the effects of man-made hydrological developments and climate variability at the basin scale. We show and explain the relation between climate, water consumption and changes in runoff for the Krishna river basin in central India. Runoff under climate variability and increasing water consumption for irrigation and hydropower is simulated for the last 100 years using the STREAM water balance model. Runoff under climate variability is shown to vary only by about 14–34 mm (6–15%). It appears that reservoir construction after 1960 and increasing water consumption has caused a persistent decrease in annual runoff of up to approximately 123 mm (61%). Variation in runoff under natural climate variability only would have decreased over the period under study, but we estimate that increasing water consumption causes about two thirds of the current runoff variability