TY - GEN A1 - Prahl, Boris F. A1 - Rybski, Diego A1 - Burghoff, Olaf A1 - Kropp, Jürgen T1 - Comparison of storm damage functions and their performance T2 - Postprints der Universität Potsdam : Mathematisch-Naturwissenschaftliche Reihe N2 - 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). T3 - Zweitveröffentlichungen der Universität Potsdam : Mathematisch-Naturwissenschaftliche Reihe - 492 KW - integrated kinetic-energy KW - residential structures KW - risk-assessment KW - wind speeds KW - data series KW - model KW - buildings KW - climate KW - losses KW - homogenization Y1 - 2019 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus4-408119 SN - 1866-8372 IS - 492 ER - TY - GEN A1 - Prahl, Boris F. A1 - Rybski, Diego A1 - Boettle, Markus A1 - Kropp, Jürgen T1 - Damage functions for climate-related hazards BT - unification and uncertainty analysis T2 - Postprints der Universität Potsdam : Mathematisch-Naturwissenschaftliche Reihe N2 - Most climate change impacts manifest in the form of natural hazards. Damage assessment typically relies on damage functions that translate the magnitude of extreme events to a quantifiable damage. In practice, the availability of damage functions is limited due to a lack of data sources and a lack of understanding of damage processes. The study of the characteristics of damage functions for different hazards could strengthen the theoretical foundation of damage functions and support their development and validation. Accordingly, we investigate analogies of damage functions for coastal flooding and for wind storms and identify a unified approach. This approach has general applicability for granular portfolios and may also be applied, for example, to heat-related mortality. Moreover, the unification enables the transfer of methodology between hazards and a consistent treatment of uncertainty. This is demonstrated by a sensitivity analysis on the basis of two simple case studies (for coastal flood and storm damage). The analysis reveals the relevance of the various uncertainty sources at varying hazard magnitude and on both the microscale and the macroscale level. Main findings are the dominance of uncertainty from the hazard magnitude and the persistent behaviour of intrinsic uncertainties on both scale levels. Our results shed light on the general role of uncertainties and provide useful insight for the application of the unified approach. T3 - Zweitveröffentlichungen der Universität Potsdam : Mathematisch-Naturwissenschaftliche Reihe - 534 KW - coastal flood damage KW - sea-level rise KW - of-the-art KW - sensitivity-analysis KW - natural hazards KW - storm damage KW - model KW - wind KW - vulnerability KW - buildings Y1 - 2019 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus4-410184 SN - 1866-8372 IS - 534 ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Prahl, Boris F. A1 - Rybski, Diego A1 - Kropp, Jürgen A1 - Burghoff, Olaf A1 - Held, Hermann T1 - Applying stochastic small-scale damage functions to German winter storms JF - Geophysical research letters N2 - 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. Y1 - 2012 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1029/2012GL050961 SN - 0094-8276 VL - 39 IS - 12 PB - American Geophysical Union CY - Washington ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Prahl, Boris F. A1 - Rybski, Diego A1 - Burghoff, Olaf A1 - Kropp, Jürgen T1 - Comparison of storm damage functions and their performance JF - Natural hazards and earth system sciences N2 - 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). Y1 - 2015 U6 - https://doi.org/10.5194/nhess-15-769-2015 SN - 1561-8633 VL - 15 IS - 4 SP - 769 EP - 788 PB - Copernicus CY - Göttingen ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Krummenauer, Linda A1 - Prahl, Boris F. A1 - Costa, Luís Fílípe Carvalho da A1 - Holsten, Anne A1 - Walther, Carsten A1 - Kropp, Jürgen T1 - Global drivers of minimum mortality temperatures in cities JF - The science of the total environment : an international journal for scientific research into the environment and its relationship with man N2 - Human mortality shows a pronounced temperature dependence. The minimum mortality temperature (MMT) as a characteristic point of the temperature-mortality relationship is influenced by many factors. As MMT estimates are based on case studies, they are sporadic, limited to data-rich regions, and their drivers have not yet been clearly identified across case studies. This impedes the elaboration of spatially comprehensive impact studies on heat-related mortality and hampers the temporal transfer required to assess climate change impacts. Using 400 MMTs from cities, we systematically establish a generalised model that is able to estimate MMTs (in daily apparent temperature) for cities, based on a set of climatic, topographic and socio-economic drivers. A sigmoid model prevailed against alternative model setups due to having the lowest Akaike Information Criterion (AICc) and the smallest RMSE. We find the long-term climate, the elevation, and the socio-economy to be relevant drivers of our MMT sample within the non-linear parametric regression model. A first model application estimated MMTs for 599 European cities ( >100 000 inhabitants) and reveals a pronounced decrease in MMTs (27.8-16 degrees C) from southern to northern cities. Disruptions of this pattern across regions of similar mean temperatures can be explained by socio-economic standards as noted for central eastern Europe. Our alternative method allows to approximate MMTs independently from the availability of daily mortality records. For the first time, a quantification of climatic and non-climatic MMT drivers has been achieved, which allows to consider changes in socio-economic conditions and climate. This work contributes to the comparability among MMTs beyond location-specific and regional limits and, hence, towards a spatially comprehensive impact assessment for heat-related mortality. KW - City population KW - Minimum mortality temperature KW - Climate KW - Topography KW - Socio-economy KW - Sigmoid model Y1 - 2019 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1016/j.scitotenv.2019.07.366 SN - 0048-9697 SN - 1879-1026 VL - 695 PB - Elsevier CY - Amsterdam ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Prahl, Boris F. A1 - Boettle, Markus A1 - Costa, Luís Fílípe Carvalho da A1 - Kropp, Jürgen A1 - Rybski, Diego T1 - Damage and protection cost curves for coastal floods within the 600 largest European cities JF - Scientific Data N2 - The economic assessment of the impacts of storm surges and sea-level rise in coastal cities requires high-level information on the damage and protection costs associated with varying flood heights. We provide a systematically and consistently calculated dataset of macroscale damage and protection cost curves for the 600 largest European coastal cities opening the perspective for a wide range of applications. Offering the first comprehensive dataset to include the costs of dike protection, we provide the underpinning information to run comparative assessments of costs and benefits of coastal adaptation. Aggregate cost curves for coastal flooding at the city-level are commonly regarded as by-products of impact assessments and are generally not published as a standalone dataset. Hence, our work also aims at initiating a more critical discussion on the availability and derivation of cost curves. Y1 - 2018 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1038/sdata.2018.34 SN - 2052-4463 VL - 5 PB - Nature Publ. Group CY - London ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Krummenauer, Linda A1 - Costa, Luís Fílípe Carvalho da A1 - Prahl, Boris F. A1 - Kropp, Jürgen T1 - Future heat adaptation and exposure among urban populations and why a prospering economy alone won’t save us JF - Scientific reports N2 - When inferring on the magnitude of future heat-related mortality due to climate change, human adaptation to heat should be accounted for. We model long-term changes in minimum mortality temperatures (MMT), a well-established metric denoting the lowest risk of heat-related mortality, as a function of climate change and socio-economic progress across 3820 cities. Depending on the combination of climate trajectories and socio-economic pathways evaluated, by 2100 the risk to human health is expected to decline in 60% to 80% of the cities against contemporary conditions. This is caused by an average global increase in MMTs driven by long-term human acclimatisation to future climatic conditions and economic development of countries. While our adaptation model suggests that negative effects on health from global warming can broadly be kept in check, the trade-offs are highly contingent to the scenario path and location-specific. For high-forcing climate scenarios (e.g. RCP8.5) the maintenance of uninterrupted high economic growth by 2100 is a hard requirement to increase MMTs and level-off the negative health effects from additional scenario-driven heat exposure. Choosing a 2 degrees C-compatible climate trajectory alleviates the dependence on fast growth, leaving room for a sustainable economy, and leads to higher reductions of mortality risk. Y1 - 2021 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-021-99757-0 SN - 2045-2322 VL - 11 IS - 1 PB - Macmillan Publishers Limited, part of Springer Nature CY - Berlin ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Prahl, Boris F. A1 - Rybski, Diego A1 - Boettle, Markus A1 - Kropp, Jürgen T1 - Damage functions for climate-related hazards: unification and uncertainty analysis JF - Natural hazards and earth system sciences N2 - Most climate change impacts manifest in the form of natural hazards. Damage assessment typically relies on damage functions that translate the magnitude of extreme events to a quantifiable damage. In practice, the availability of damage functions is limited due to a lack of data sources and a lack of understanding of damage processes. The study of the characteristics of damage functions for different hazards could strengthen the theoretical foundation of damage functions and support their development and validation. Accordingly, we investigate analogies of damage functions for coastal flooding and for wind storms and identify a unified approach. This approach has general applicability for granular portfolios and may also be applied, for example, to heat-related mortality. Moreover, the unification enables the transfer of methodology between hazards and a consistent treatment of uncertainty. This is demonstrated by a sensitivity analysis on the basis of two simple case studies (for coastal flood and storm damage). The analysis reveals the relevance of the various uncertainty sources at varying hazard magnitude and on both the microscale and the macroscale level. Main findings are the dominance of uncertainty from the hazard magnitude and the persistent behaviour of intrinsic uncertainties on both scale levels. Our results shed light on the general role of uncertainties and provide useful insight for the application of the unified approach. Y1 - 2016 U6 - https://doi.org/10.5194/nhess-16-1189-2016 SN - 1561-8633 VL - 16 SP - 1189 EP - 1203 PB - Copernicus CY - Göttingen ER - TY - GEN A1 - Prahl, Boris F. A1 - Boettle, Markus A1 - Costa, Luís Fílípe Carvalho da A1 - Kropp, Jürgen A1 - Rybski, Diego T1 - Damage and protection cost curves for coastal floods within the 600 largest European cities T2 - Postprints der Universität Potsdam : Mathematisch-Naturwissenschaftliche Reihe N2 - The economic assessment of the impacts of storm surges and sea-level rise in coastal cities requires high-level information on the damage and protection costs associated with varying flood heights. We provide a systematically and consistently calculated dataset of macroscale damage and protection cost curves for the 600 largest European coastal cities opening the perspective for a wide range of applications. Offering the first comprehensive dataset to include the costs of dike protection, we provide the underpinning information to run comparative assessments of costs and benefits of coastal adaptation. Aggregate cost curves for coastal flooding at the city-level are commonly regarded as by-products of impact assessments and are generally not published as a standalone dataset. Hence, our work also aims at initiating a more critical discussion on the availability and derivation of cost curves. T3 - Zweitveröffentlichungen der Universität Potsdam : Mathematisch-Naturwissenschaftliche Reihe - 938 KW - sea-level rise KW - topographic data KW - climate-change KW - adaptation KW - scale KW - exposure KW - model Y1 - 2020 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus4-459672 SN - 1866-8372 IS - 938 ER -