Integrated Catastrophe Risk Modeling

Abstract

This book aims to advance risk management policy and its implementation by demonstrating the application of novel techniques, including integrated catastrophe models, to aid policy decisions on contemporary disaster risk issues. With the dramatic rise in disaster events across an increasingly populous and interdependent world, people and communities are recognizing the importance of reducing their human and economic toll. Efforts are thus being intensified to manage risk and incorporate risk management principles into policymaking. Science-based risk management policy is not without its challenges. Given the dynamic demographic, economic, and social context in which most hazards are embedded, including the changing climate, it is not only difficult to assess risk, but standard statistical measures are inappropriate for high-impact, low-probability events with probability distributions characterized by fat tails. In addition, data on rare events are, by definition, very limited and fraught with uncertainties. Beyond the assessment of risk itself, identifying robust policy options in a highly uncertain future world poses equally difficult challenges. Finally, experts alone cannot evaluate policy options, as these depend on the values and preferences of those affected. This raises the challenge of designing and assisting stakeholder processes that can inform risk management decisions. In this book, we address all these challenges by developing and applying modeling techniques for the assessment and management of catastrophe risk through an integrated “systems” approach. We emphasize integration across natural and social systems, applying models that take account of the intensity and fre- quency of natural phenomena combined with the exposure and vulnerability of social and economic systems. Integration also means gauging the complex interdependencies of risk across different temporal and spatial scales, which often requires estimates to be made into the distant future and at the local, regional, and even global levels. Integration, too, means taking due consideration of the manifold uncertainties and social constructions of disaster risk. Finally, and perhaps most importantly for the risk management policy process, integration means listen- ing and responding to the plural and competing values and worldviews of stakeholders and policymakers.