Introducing a new hazard and exposure atlas for European winter storms

Area of Science:

• Climatology and Natural Hazards
• Environmental Science
• Geospatial Analysis

Background:

• Winter storms pose significant natural hazards in Europe, often analyzed through climatology or land use alone.
• Accurate storm protection management necessitates high spatiotemporal resolution wind speed and land use data.

Purpose of the Study:

• To model wind speed for 27 extreme winter storms (1993-2022) at 250m resolution.
• To develop novel storm hazard and exposure indices for forested, built-up, and population areas in Europe.

Main Methods:

• Least-squares boosting approach using ERA5 reanalysis and 1730 meteorological sites to model wind speed.
• Integration of temporally variable population, built-up, and forested area grids.
• Calculation of storm exposure indices for European NUTS3 regions.

Main Results:

• Modeled wind speed fields achieved a coefficient of determination of 0.73 against independent measurements.
• Wind speed maps highlight the localized impact of individual winter storm events.
• Storm exposure of built-up areas has significantly increased due to evolving land use and wind patterns.

Conclusions:

• Distinguishing between storm hazard and storm exposure is crucial for effective risk assessment.
• Storm exposure is dynamic, influenced by changes in wind speed and land use over time.
• Developed indices offer precise, sector- and location-specific evaluations for improving storm protection strategies.