36 research outputs found
Review article: assessing the costs of natural hazards - state of the art and knowledge gaps
Get PDFEfficiently 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
Storm Surge Disaster Risk Management: Xynthia Case Study in France
No full textInternational audienceIn recent years, a series of catastrophic storm surges have occurred in Europe. The large number of fatalities and high material damage are mainly due to an increase in vulnerability and exposure to coastal flooding of hit regions. It is, therefore, necessary to intensify research activities in order to better understand this kind of disasters, to reduce their impacts and to reinforce risk management. This study describes the consequences of Xynthia windstorm that hit France in 2010: strong wind gusts, associated to high-coefficient tides and very low pressure, caused a phenomenon of storm surge in the Atlantic coastal area of France. Sea walls, lacking maintenance and originally built to defend agricultural land, were not able to protect houses. Fourty-seven people were killed, most of them from drowning, and direct losses amounted to more than 2.5 billion Euros. Around 10,000 people were forced to evacuate after the inundation of their properties. Uncontrolled urbanization was involved in the increase of stakes, as demonstrated by the fact that all the 29 victims in the city of la Faute-sur-Mer were living in houses built after 1980. The paper describes the event considering the aspect of increased vulnerability in the affected area, the lack of preparedness that exacerbated the final damage, the emergency response phases and the adaptation strategies adopted by the French Government after the disaster. We conclude that an attentive governance should include a balanced approach to risk protection, to reduce vulnerability and exposure
Gestion des risques naturels : Leçons de la tempête Xynthia
No full textLa politique de gestion du risque mise en oeuvre suite à la tempête Xynthia en février 2010 a fait apparaître la nécessité de repenser la politique française de gestion des risques et son plan d'adaptation au changement climatique. Cet ouvrage collectif analyse les catastrophes naturelles récentes, et notamment Xynthia, et propose quelques pistes pour une politique intégrée de gestion du risque
