In 2014 RPV researchers contributed to a methodological breakthrough in the assessment of “fat-tail” extreme riverine flood risk distributions by developing an advanced copula approach that makes it possible to take account of increasing tail dependencies and derive improved probability-based flood-loss estimates across Europe [1]. These assessments until now were made without taking into account spatial correlations between river basins, leading to a serious underestimation of the risks (see Figure 1). This analysis has important implications for managing risks at the European scale, for instance, through the pan-European Union Solidarity Fund (EUSF).
Figure 1. Probabilistic estimates of annual European flood losses using dependence and independence models for current and future scenarios (click on image to enlarge).
References
[1] Jongman B, Hochrainer-Stigler S et al. (2014). Increasing stress on disaster risk finance due to large floods. Nature Climate Change (letter). doi: 10.1038/nclimate2124
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Institute for Environmental Studies, Netherlands
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