@article{PrahlRybskiBurghoffetal.2015,
  author    = {Prahl, Boris F. and Rybski, Diego and Burghoff, Olaf and Kropp, J{\"u}rgen},
  title     = {Comparison of storm damage functions and their performance},
  series = {Natural hazards and earth system sciences},
  volume    = {15},
  journal   = {Natural hazards and earth system sciences},
  number    = {4},
  publisher = {Copernicus},
  address   = {G{\"o}ttingen},
  issn      = {1561-8633},
  doi       = {10.5194/nhess-15-769-2015},
  pages     = {769 -- 788},
  year      = {2015},
  abstract  = {Winter storms are the most costly natural hazard for European residential property. We compare four distinct storm damage functions with respect to their forecast accuracy and variability, with particular regard to the most severe winter storms. The analysis focuses on daily loss estimates under differing spatial aggregation, ranging from district to country level. We discuss the broad and heavily skewed distribution of insured losses posing difficulties for both the calibration and the evaluation of damage functions. From theoretical considerations, we provide a synthesis between the frequently discussed cubic wind-damage relationship and recent studies that report much steeper damage functions for European winter storms. The performance of the storm loss models is evaluated for two sources of wind gust data, direct observations by the German Weather Service and ERA-Interim reanalysis data. While the choice of gust data has little impact on the evaluation of German storm loss, spatially resolved coefficients of variation reveal dependence between model and data choice. The comparison shows that the probabilistic models by Heneka et al. (2006) and Prahl et al. (2012) both provide accurate loss predictions for moderate to extreme losses, with generally small coefficients of variation. We favour the latter model in terms of model applicability. Application of the versatile deterministic model by Klawa and Ulbrich (2003) should be restricted to extreme loss, for which it shows the least bias and errors comparable to the probabilistic model by Prahl et al. (2012).},
  language  = {en}
}
@article{PrahlRybskiKroppetal.2012,
  author    = {Prahl, Boris F. and Rybski, Diego and Kropp, J{\"u}rgen and Burghoff, Olaf and Held, Hermann},
  title     = {Applying stochastic small-scale damage functions to German winter storms},
  series = {Geophysical research letters},
  volume    = {39},
  journal   = {Geophysical research letters},
  number    = {12},
  publisher = {American Geophysical Union},
  address   = {Washington},
  issn      = {0094-8276},
  doi       = {10.1029/2012GL050961},
  pages     = {6},
  year      = {2012},
  abstract  = {Analyzing insurance-loss data we derive stochastic storm-damage functions for residential buildings. On district level we fit power-law relations between daily loss and maximum wind speed, typically spanning more than 4 orders of magnitude. The estimated exponents for 439 German districts roughly range from 8 to 12. In addition, we find correlations among the parameters and socio-demographic data, which we employ in a simplified parametrization of the damage function with just 3 independent parameters for each district. A Monte Carlo method is used to generate loss estimates and confidence bounds of daily and annual storm damages in Germany. Our approach reproduces the annual progression of winter storm losses and enables to estimate daily losses over a wide range of magnitudes. Citation: Prahl, B. F., D. Rybski, J. P. Kropp, O. Burghoff, and H. Held (2012), Applying stochastic small-scale damage functions to German winter storms, Geophys. Res. Lett., 39, L06806, doi: 10.1029/2012GL050961.},
  language  = {en}
}