Review article: assessing the costs of natural hazards - state of the art and knowledge gaps

Efficiently reducing natural hazard risks requires a thorough understanding of the costs of natural hazards. Current methods to assess these costs employ a variety of terminologies and approaches for different types of natural hazards and different impacted sectors. This may impede efforts to ascertain comprehensive and comparable cost figures. In order to strengthen the role of cost assessments in the development of integrated natural hazard management, a review of existing cost assessment approaches was undertaken. This review considers droughts, floods, coastal and Alpine hazards, and examines different cost types, namely direct tangible damages, losses due to business interruption, indirect damages, intangible effects, and the costs of risk mitigation. This paper provides an overview of the state-of-the-art cost assessment approaches and discusses key knowledge gaps. It shows that the application of cost assessments in practice is often incomplete and biased, as direct costs receive a relatively large amount of attention, while intangible and indirect effects are rarely considered. Furthermore, all parts of cost assessment entail considerable uncertainties due to insufficient or highly aggregated data sources, along with a lack of knowledge about the processes leading to damage and thus the appropriate models required. Recommendations are provided on how to reduce or handle these uncertainties by improving data sources and cost assessment methods. Further recommendations address how risk dynamics due to climate and socio-economic change can be better considered, how costs are distributed and risks transferred, and in what ways cost assessment can function as part of decision support

Review article: Assessing the costs of natural hazards - state of the art and knowledge gaps

Efficiently reducing natural hazard risks requires a thorough understanding of the costs of natural hazards. Current methods to assess these costs employ a variety of terminologies and approaches for different types of natural hazards and different impacted sectors. This may impede efforts to ascertain comprehensive and comparable cost figures. In order to strengthen the role of cost assessments in the development of integrated natural hazard management, a review of existing cost assessment approaches was undertaken. This review considers droughts, floods, coastal and Alpine hazards, and examines different cost types, namely direct tangible damages, losses due to business interruption, indirect damages, intangible effects, and the costs of risk mitigation. This paper provides an overview of the state-of-the-art cost assessment approaches and discusses key knowledge gaps. It shows that the application of cost assessments in practice is often incomplete and biased, as direct costs receive a relatively large amount of attention, while intangible and indirect effects are rarely considered. Furthermore, all parts of cost assessment entail considerable uncertainties due to insufficient or highly aggregated data sources, along with a lack of knowledge about the processes leading to damage and thus the appropriate models required. Recommendations are provided on how to reduce or handle these uncertainties by improving data sources and cost assessment methods. Further recommendations address how risk dynamics due to climate and socio-economic change can be better considered, how costs are distributed and risks transferred, and in what ways cost assessment can function as part of decision support

Understanding policy integration in the EU—Insights from a multi-level lens on climate adaptation and the EU's coastal and marine policy

© 2017 Elsevier Ltd Integration of relatively new policy tasks like climate adaptation into established higher-level policy fields is insufficiently understood in the academic literature. This paper proposes a framework to evaluate the integration of climate adaptation into the sectoral policy-making of the European Commission, particularly following the publication of the EU Adaptation Strategy (in 2013). The paper uses a framework of micro, meso and macro-level institutional behaviour drawing strongly on new institutionalism perspectives to identify and explain factors enabling and hindering policy integration. It focuses on integration in the coastal and marine policy sector, which is expected to be particularly vulnerable to climate change impacts, and draws from data collected through a document review and interviews with key informants. The findings show that the integration of climate adaptation is still at an early stage. The integration process appears to be largely dependent on institutional dynamics at the EU-level combined with how member states and wider sectoral stakeholders engage with adaptation concerns. In particular, the ambivalence of some member states and a lack of urgency among sectoral stakeholders has hampered the integration of adaptation goals

Inter-basin transfers as a supply option: the end of an era?

International audienceThis chapter discusses the evolving role of interbasin transfers (IBT) in urban water management. After providing an historical overview of IBT development, the chapter describes how IBTs are challenged by a change in the technological and socio-economic context. The emergence of alternative technologies, such as desalination, wastewater reclamation and reuse, or managed artificial groundwater recharge is reducing the attractiveness of IBTs. Water utilities are also becoming increasingly aware that water conservation programs can save volumes of water at a much cheaper cost than IBT. Various international examples are used to show that IBTs trigger increasing concerns from communities involved or affected, in particular related to the environmental impact on donor and receiving river basins, the economic impact on donor regions, the impact on local cultures and livelihoods, how costs and benefits are distributed (social justice), and issues related to public participation. The chapter concludes by looking ahead at new and more efficient uses of existing IBTs. As conjunctive use management approaches gain support, IBTs will be operated in conjunction with aquifer storage and recovery schemes. They will probably also support the development of emerging water markets, in particular during drought years

Flood-resilient waterfront development in New York City: bridging flood insurance, building codes, and flood zoning

Waterfronts are attractive areas for many—often competing—uses in New York City (NYC) and are seen as multifunctional locations for economic, environmental, and social activities on the interface between land and water. The NYC waterfront plays a crucial role as a first line of flood defense and in managing flood risk and protecting the city from future climate change and sea-level rise. The city of New York has embarked on a climate adaptation program (PlaNYC) outlining the policies needed to anticipate the impacts of climate change. As part of this policy, the Department of City Planning is currently preparing Vision 2020: New York City Comprehensive Waterfront Plan for the over 500 miles of NYC waterfront (NYC-DCP, 2011). An integral part of the vision is to improve resilience to climate change and sea-level rise. This study seeks to provide guidance for advancing the goals of NYC Vision 2020 by assessing how flood insurance, flood zoning, and building code policies can contribute to waterfront development that is more resilient to climate change

Retour vers le futur de l’échange marchand

Cet article vise à présenter les contributions majeures de l’ouvrage collectif intitulé Les reconfigurations de l’échange marchand : Tour d’horizon, enjeux et perspectives, publié aux Presses universitaires du Québec et dirigé par les professeurs Myriam Ertz, Julien Bousquet et Damien Hallegatte. D’après l’ensemble des collaborateurs de cet ouvrage, l’échange marchand est en mutation profonde. Cette métamorphose a résulté en quatre grandes évolutions : une conceptualisation revue de l’échange marchand, l’émergence de devises d’échanges alternatives, la réactualisation du produit aux coeur d’échange reconfigurés, et la quête de sens dans la consommation. Si les causes de ces évolutions sont assez difficiles à isoler de manière précise, il n’en demeure pas moins que cette modification en profondeur de la manière dont fonctionne le marché résulte de la convergence de trois tendances lourdes : les évolutions technologiques, les évolutions socioculturelles, et les contraintes économico-financières. Cet article résume ainsi les domaines de changement ainsi que les causes de changement tel qu’identifié par les auteurs de l’ouvrage collectif.This article outlines the major contributions of the collective book entitled Les reconfigurations de l’échange marchand : Tour d’horizon, enjeux et perspectives, published by Presses Universitaires du Québec and edited by professors Myriam Ertz, Julien Bousquet and Damien Hallegatte. According to the contributors of this article, commercial exchange is undergoing a deep change. This transformation led to four main evolutions: a reviewed conceptualization of commercial exchange, the emergence of alternative exchange currencies, updating of the product at the core of re-engineered exchanges, and a quest for a meaning in consumption. If causes of these evolutions are difficult to isolate accurately, it remains that this deep change in the way markets function leads to the convergence of three underlying trends: technological evolutions, sociocultural evolutions, and economic and financial constraints. This article summarizes the areas and the causes of change as identified by the authors of the collective work