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The price of safety costs for mitigating and coping with Alpine hazards

  • Due to limited public budgets and the need to economize, the analysis of costs of hazard mitigation and emergency management of natural hazards becomes increasingly important for public natural hazard and risk management. In recent years there has been a growing body of literature on the estimation of losses which supported to help to determine benefits of measures in terms of prevented losses. On the contrary, the costs of mitigation are hardly addressed. This paper thus aims to shed some light on expenses for mitigation and emergency services. For this, we analysed the annual costs of mitigation efforts in four regions/countries of the Alpine Arc: Bavaria (Germany), Tyrol (Austria), South Tyrol (Italy) and Switzerland. On the basis of PPP values (purchasing power parities), annual expenses on public safety ranged from EUR 44 per capita in the Free State of Bavaria to EUR 216 in the Autonomous Province of South Tyrol. To analyse the (variable) costs for emergency services in case of an event, we used detailed data from the 2005Due to limited public budgets and the need to economize, the analysis of costs of hazard mitigation and emergency management of natural hazards becomes increasingly important for public natural hazard and risk management. In recent years there has been a growing body of literature on the estimation of losses which supported to help to determine benefits of measures in terms of prevented losses. On the contrary, the costs of mitigation are hardly addressed. This paper thus aims to shed some light on expenses for mitigation and emergency services. For this, we analysed the annual costs of mitigation efforts in four regions/countries of the Alpine Arc: Bavaria (Germany), Tyrol (Austria), South Tyrol (Italy) and Switzerland. On the basis of PPP values (purchasing power parities), annual expenses on public safety ranged from EUR 44 per capita in the Free State of Bavaria to EUR 216 in the Autonomous Province of South Tyrol. To analyse the (variable) costs for emergency services in case of an event, we used detailed data from the 2005 floods in the Federal State of Tyrol (Austria) as well as aggregated data from the 2002 floods in Germany. The analysis revealed that multi-hazards, the occurrence and intermixture of different natural hazard processes, contribute to increasing emergency costs. Based on these findings, research gaps and recommendations for costing Alpine natural hazards are discussed.show moreshow less

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Author details:Clemens Pfurtscheller, Annegret Henriette ThiekenORCiDGND
DOI:https://doi.org/10.5194/nhess-13-2619-2013
ISSN:1561-8633
Title of parent work (English):Natural hazards and earth system sciences
Publisher:Copernicus
Place of publishing:Göttingen
Publication type:Article
Language:English
Year of first publication:2013
Publication year:2013
Release date:2017/03/26
Volume:13
Issue:10
Number of pages:19
First page:2619
Last Page:2637
Funding institution:European Community [244159]; Austrian Academy of Sciences (OAW), Institute of Interdisciplinary Mountain Research (IGF)
Organizational units:Mathematisch-Naturwissenschaftliche Fakultät / Institut für Umweltwissenschaften und Geographie
Peer review:Referiert
Publishing method:Open Access
Institution name at the time of the publication:Mathematisch-Naturwissenschaftliche Fakultät / Institut für Geographie und Geoökologie
Mathematisch-Naturwissenschaftliche Fakultät / Institut für Geoökologie
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