Global multi-hazard risk assessment in a changing climate

Area of Science:

• Climate science
• Environmental risk assessment
• Geosciences

Background:

• Natural hazards present substantial risks globally, necessitating accurate quantification for adaptation and insurance.
• Conventional risk assessments often overlook multi-hazard interactions, leading to potential under or overestimations of actual risks.

Purpose of the Study:

• To develop and present a globally consistent framework for modeling multi-hazard risks.
• To incorporate hazards, exposures, vulnerabilities, and recovery assumptions into a unified risk assessment.
• To illustrate the framework's application using river floods and tropical cyclones under a changing climate.

Main Methods:

• Combined single hazard models driven by identical climate model realizations for physical consistency.
• Developed a framework considering hazards, exposures, vulnerabilities, and recovery.
• Implemented the framework within the open-source CLIMADA platform.

Main Results:

• Incorporating common physical drivers and recovery processes significantly alters multi-hazard risk assessments.
• The framework successfully models combined impacts of river floods and tropical cyclones on people and assets globally.
• Demonstrated the framework's scalability to more than two hazards and integration of diverse recovery scenarios.

Conclusions:

• The developed framework offers a more comprehensive approach to multi-hazard risk management compared to traditional methods.
• This approach provides a consistent global perspective on climate-related risks.
• The CLIMADA platform enables flexible application to various hazards and exposures for improved risk assessment.