TY - JOUR A1 - Kreibich, Heidi A1 - Müller, Meike A1 - Schröter, Kai A1 - Thieken, Annegret T1 - New insights into flood warning reception and emergency response by affected parties JF - Natural hazards and earth system sciences N2 - Flood damage can be mitigated if the parties at risk are reached by flood warnings and if they know how to react appropriately. To gain more knowledge about warning reception and emergency response of private households and companies, surveys were undertaken after the August 2002 and the June 2013 floods in Germany. Despite pronounced regional differences, the results show a clear overall picture: in 2002, early warnings did not work well; e.g. many households (27 %) and companies (45 %) stated that they had not received any flood warnings. Additionally, the preparedness of private households and companies was low in 2002, mainly due to a lack of flood experience. After the 2002 flood, many initiatives were launched and investments undertaken to improve flood risk management, including early warnings and an emergency response in Germany. In 2013, only a small share of the affected households (5 %) and companies (3 %) were not reached by any warnings. Additionally, private households and companies were better prepared. For instance, the share of companies which have an emergency plan in place has increased from 10% in 2002 to 34% in 2013. However, there is still room for improvement, which needs to be triggered mainly by effective risk and emergency communication. The challenge is to continuously maintain and advance an integrated early warning and emergency response system even without the occurrence of extreme floods. Y1 - 2017 U6 - https://doi.org/10.5194/nhess-17-2075-2017 SN - 1561-8633 VL - 17 SP - 2075 EP - 2092 PB - Copernicus CY - Göttingen ER - TY - GEN A1 - Kreibich, Heidi A1 - Müller, Meike A1 - Schröter, Kai A1 - Thieken, Annegret T1 - New insights into flood warning reception and emergency response by affected parties T2 - Postprints der Universität Potsdam : Mathematisch-Naturwissenschaftliche Reihe N2 - Flood damage can be mitigated if the parties at risk are reached by flood warnings and if they know how to react appropriately. To gain more knowledge about warning reception and emergency response of private households and companies, surveys were undertaken after the August 2002 and the June 2013 floods in Germany. Despite pronounced regional differences, the results show a clear overall picture: in 2002, early warnings did not work well; e.g. many households (27 %) and companies (45 %) stated that they had not received any flood warnings. Additionally, the preparedness of private households and companies was low in 2002, mainly due to a lack of flood experience. After the 2002 flood, many initiatives were launched and investments undertaken to improve flood risk management, including early warnings and an emergency response in Germany. In 2013, only a small share of the affected households (5 %) and companies (3 %) were not reached by any warnings. Additionally, private households and companies were better prepared. For instance, the share of companies which have an emergency plan in place has increased from 10% in 2002 to 34% in 2013. However, there is still room for improvement, which needs to be triggered mainly by effective risk and emergency communication. The challenge is to continuously maintain and advance an integrated early warning and emergency response system even without the occurrence of extreme floods. T3 - Zweitveröffentlichungen der Universität Potsdam : Mathematisch-Naturwissenschaftliche Reihe - 659 KW - june 2013 Flood KW - circulation patterns KW - affected residents KW - extreme flood KW - august 2002 KW - Germany KW - risk KW - damage KW - preparedness KW - recovery Y1 - 2019 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus4-418381 SN - 1866-8372 IS - 659 ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Müller, Meike A1 - Bessel, Tina A1 - Pisi, Sebastian A1 - Kreibich, Heidi A1 - Thieken, Annegret T1 - Auswirkungen und Schäden JF - Das Hochwasser im Juni 2013 : Bewährungsprobe für das Hochwasserrisikomanagement in Deutschland Y1 - 2015 SN - 978-3-933181-62-6 SP - 31 EP - 45 ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Rözer, Viktor A1 - Kreibich, Heidi A1 - Schröter, Kai A1 - Müller, Meike A1 - Sairam, Nivedita A1 - Doss-Gollin, James A1 - Lall, Upmanu A1 - Merz, Bruno T1 - Probabilistic Models Significantly Reduce Uncertainty in Hurricane Harvey Pluvial Flood Loss Estimates JF - Earths future N2 - Pluvial flood risk is mostly excluded in urban flood risk assessment. However, the risk of pluvial flooding is a growing challenge with a projected increase of extreme rainstorms compounding with an ongoing global urbanization. Considered as a flood type with minimal impacts when rainfall rates exceed the capacity of urban drainage systems, the aftermath of rainfall-triggered flooding during Hurricane Harvey and other events show the urgent need to assess the risk of pluvial flooding. Due to the local extent and small-scale variations, the quantification of pluvial flood risk requires risk assessments on high spatial resolutions. While flood hazard and exposure information is becoming increasingly accurate, the estimation of losses is still a poorly understood component of pluvial flood risk quantification. We use a new probabilistic multivariable modeling approach to estimate pluvial flood losses of individual buildings, explicitly accounting for the associated uncertainties. Except for the water depth as the common most important predictor, we identified the drivers for having loss or not and for the degree of loss to be different. Applying this approach to estimate and validate building structure losses during Hurricane Harvey using a property level data set, we find that the reliability and dispersion of predictive loss distributions vary widely depending on the model and aggregation level of property level loss estimates. Our results show that the use of multivariable zero-inflated beta models reduce the 90% prediction intervalsfor Hurricane Harvey building structure loss estimates on average by 78% (totalling U.S.$3.8 billion) compared to commonly used models. KW - pluvial flooding KW - loss modeling KW - urban flooding KW - probabilistic KW - Hurricane Harvey KW - climate change adaptation Y1 - 2019 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1029/2018EF001074 SN - 2328-4277 VL - 7 IS - 4 SP - 384 EP - 394 PB - American Geophysical Union CY - Washington ER - TY - GEN A1 - Rözer, Viktor A1 - Müller, Meike A1 - Bubeck, Philip A1 - Kienzler, Sarah A1 - Thieken, Annegret A1 - Pech, Ina A1 - Schröter, Kai A1 - Buchholz, Oliver A1 - Kreibich, Heidi T1 - Coping with pluvial floods by private households N2 - Pluvial floods have caused severe damage to urban areas in recent years. With a projected increase in extreme precipitation as well as an ongoing urbanization, pluvial flood damage is expected to increase in the future. Therefore, further insights, especially on the adverse consequences of pluvial floods and their mitigation, are needed. To gain more knowledge, empirical damage data from three different pluvial flood events in Germany were collected through computer-aided telephone interviews. Pluvial flood awareness as well as flood experience were found to be low before the respective flood events. The level of private precaution increased considerably after all events, but is mainly focused on measures that are easy to implement. Lower inundation depths, smaller potential losses as compared with fluvial floods, as well as the fact that pluvial flooding may occur everywhere, are expected to cause a shift in damage mitigation from precaution to emergency response. However, an effective implementation of emergency measures was constrained by a low dissemination of early warnings in the study areas. Further improvements of early warning systems including dissemination as well as a rise in pluvial flood preparedness are important to reduce future pluvial flood damage. T3 - Zweitveröffentlichungen der Universität Potsdam : Mathematisch-Naturwissenschaftliche Reihe - 355 KW - pluvial floods KW - surface water flooding KW - emergency response KW - early warning KW - preparedness KW - damage KW - mitigation Y1 - 2017 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus4-400465 ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Rözer, Viktor A1 - Müller, Meike A1 - Bubeck, Philip A1 - Kienzler, Sarah A1 - Thieken, Annegret A1 - Pech, Ina A1 - Schröter, Kai A1 - Buchholz, Oliver A1 - Kreibich, Heidi T1 - Coping with Pluvial Floods by Private Households JF - Water N2 - Pluvial floods have caused severe damage to urban areas in recent years. With a projected increase in extreme precipitation as well as an ongoing urbanization, pluvial flood damage is expected to increase in the future. Therefore, further insights, especially on the adverse consequences of pluvial floods and their mitigation, are needed. To gain more knowledge, empirical damage data from three different pluvial flood events in Germany were collected through computer-aided telephone interviews. Pluvial flood awareness as well as flood experience were found to be low before the respective flood events. The level of private precaution increased considerably after all events, but is mainly focused on measures that are easy to implement. Lower inundation depths, smaller potential losses as compared with fluvial floods, as well as the fact that pluvial flooding may occur everywhere, are expected to cause a shift in damage mitigation from precaution to emergency response. However, an effective implementation of emergency measures was constrained by a low dissemination of early warnings in the study areas. Further improvements of early warning systems including dissemination as well as a rise in pluvial flood preparedness are important to reduce future pluvial flood damage. KW - pluvial floods KW - surface water flooding KW - emergency response KW - early warning KW - preparedness KW - damage KW - mitigation Y1 - 2016 U6 - https://doi.org/10.3390/w8070304 SN - 2073-4441 VL - 8 PB - MDPI CY - Basel ER - TY - GEN A1 - Sultana, Zakia A1 - Sieg, Tobias A1 - Kellermann, Patric A1 - Müller, Meike A1 - Kreibich, Heidi T1 - Assessment of business interruption of flood-affected companies using random forests T2 - Postprints der Universität Potsdam : Mathematisch-Naturwissenschaftliche Reihe N2 - Losses due to floods have dramatically increased over the past decades, and losses of companies, comprising direct and indirect losses, have a large share of the total economic losses. Thus, there is an urgent need to gain more quantitative knowledge about flood losses, particularly losses caused by business interruption, in order to mitigate the economic loss of companies. However, business interruption caused by floods is rarely assessed because of a lack of sufficiently detailed data. A survey was undertaken to explore processes influencing business interruption, which collected information on 557 companies affected by the severe flood in June 2013 in Germany. Based on this data set, the study aims to assess the business interruption of directly affected companies by means of a Random Forests model. Variables that influence the duration and costs of business interruption were identified by the variable importance measures of Random Forests. Additionally, Random Forest-based models were developed and tested for their capacity to estimate business interruption duration and associated costs. The water level was found to be the most important variable influencing the duration of business interruption. Other important variables, relating to the estimation of business interruption duration, are the warning time, perceived danger of flood recurrence and inundation duration. In contrast, the amount of business interruption costs is strongly influenced by the size of the company, as assessed by the number of employees, emergency measures undertaken by the company and the fraction of customers within a 50 km radius. These results provide useful information and methods for companies to mitigate their losses from business interruption. However, the heterogeneity of companies is relatively high, and sector-specific analyses were not possible due to the small sample size. Therefore, further sector-specific analyses on the basis of more flood loss data of companies are recommended. T3 - Zweitveröffentlichungen der Universität Potsdam : Mathematisch-Naturwissenschaftliche Reihe - 939 KW - business interruption KW - floods KW - Random Forests KW - companies KW - variable importance Y1 - 2020 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus4-459778 SN - 1866-8372 IS - 939 ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Sultana, Zakia A1 - Sieg, Tobias A1 - Kellermann, Patric A1 - Müller, Meike A1 - Kreibich, Heidi T1 - Assessment of business interruption of flood-affected companies using random forests JF - Water N2 - Losses due to floods have dramatically increased over the past decades, and losses of companies, comprising direct and indirect losses, have a large share of the total economic losses. Thus, there is an urgent need to gain more quantitative knowledge about flood losses, particularly losses caused by business interruption, in order to mitigate the economic loss of companies. However, business interruption caused by floods is rarely assessed because of a lack of sufficiently detailed data. A survey was undertaken to explore processes influencing business interruption, which collected information on 557 companies affected by the severe flood in June 2013 in Germany. Based on this data set, the study aims to assess the business interruption of directly affected companies by means of a Random Forests model. Variables that influence the duration and costs of business interruption were identified by the variable importance measures of Random Forests. Additionally, Random Forest-based models were developed and tested for their capacity to estimate business interruption duration and associated costs. The water level was found to be the most important variable influencing the duration of business interruption. Other important variables, relating to the estimation of business interruption duration, are the warning time, perceived danger of flood recurrence and inundation duration. In contrast, the amount of business interruption costs is strongly influenced by the size of the company, as assessed by the number of employees, emergency measures undertaken by the company and the fraction of customers within a 50 km radius. These results provide useful information and methods for companies to mitigate their losses from business interruption. However, the heterogeneity of companies is relatively high, and sector-specific analyses were not possible due to the small sample size. Therefore, further sector-specific analyses on the basis of more flood loss data of companies are recommended. KW - business interruption KW - floods KW - Random Forests KW - companies KW - variable importance Y1 - 2018 U6 - https://doi.org/10.3390/w10081049 SN - 2073-4441 VL - 10 IS - 8 PB - MDPI CY - Basel ER - TY - BOOK A1 - Thieken, Annegret A1 - Bessel, Tina A1 - Callsen, Ines A1 - Falter, Daniela A1 - Hasan, Issa A1 - Kienzler, Sarah A1 - Kox, Thomas A1 - Kreibich, Heidi A1 - Kuhlicke, Christian A1 - Kunz, Michael A1 - Matthias, Max A1 - Meyer, Volker A1 - Mühr, Bernhard A1 - Müller, Meike A1 - Otto, Antje A1 - Pech, Ina A1 - Petrow, Theresia A1 - Pisi, Sebastian A1 - Rother, Karl-Heinz A1 - Schröter, Kai T1 - Das Hochwasser im Juni 2013 BT - Bewährungsprobe für das Hochwasserrisikomanagement in Deutschland T3 - Schriftenreihe des DKKV ; 53 Y1 - 2015 SN - 978-3-933181-62-6 PB - Deutsches Komitee Katastrophenvorsorge CY - Bonn ER - TY - GEN A1 - Thieken, Annegret A1 - Bessel, Tina A1 - Kienzler, Sarah A1 - Kreibich, Heidi A1 - Müller, Meike A1 - Pisi, Sebastian A1 - Schröter, Kai T1 - The flood of June 2013 in Germany BT - how much do we know about its impacts? T2 - National Hazards Earth System Science N2 - In June 2013, widespread flooding and consequent damage and losses occurred in Central Europe, especially in Germany. This paper explores what data are available to investigate the adverse impacts of the event, what kind of information can be retrieved from these data and how well data and information fulfil requirements that were recently proposed for disaster reporting on the European and international levels. In accordance with the European Floods Directive (2007/60/EC), impacts on human health, economic activities (and assets), cultural heritage and the environment are described on the national and sub-national scale. Information from governmental reports is complemented by communications on traffic disruptions and surveys of flood-affected residents and companies. Overall, the impacts of the flood event in 2013 were manifold. The study reveals that flood-affected residents suffered from a large range of impacts, among which mental health and supply problems were perceived more seriously than financial losses. The most frequent damage type among affected companies was business interruption. This demonstrates that the current scientific focus on direct (financial) damage is insufficient to describe the overall impacts and severity of flood events. The case further demonstrates that procedures and standards for impact data collection in Germany are widely missing. Present impact data in Germany are fragmentary, heterogeneous, incomplete and difficult to access. In order to fulfil, for example, the monitoring and reporting requirements of the Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction 2015–2030 that was adopted in March 2015 in Sendai, Japan, more efforts on impact data collection are needed. Y1 - 2016 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus4-97207 ER -