Assessing the costs of the overall economic impacts of natural hazards, costs of prevention and costs of responses to natural hazards supply crucial information for decision-making practices in the fields of disaster risk reduction, natural hazard and risk management and climate change adaptation planning. However, the lack of empirical impact data as well as the significant diversity in methods that are currently applied in costs assessments of different natural hazards and impacted sectors make it difficult to establish comprehensive, robust and reliable cost figures. This also hinders comparisons of associated costs across countries, hazards and impacted sectors. This session aims to review current methodological approaches for assessing individual cost types (such as direct damages to housing, indirect losses, as well as costs of risk reduction) and aims to show how these methods are used in the context of various natural hazards (e.g. floods, droughts, earthquakes). We welcome submissions in the areas of assessing these various types of damage induced by any kind of natural hazard. Also, we are interested in contributions that focus on the cost-effectiveness or efficiency of risk reduction to natural hazards and adaptation to increasing weather risks that are due to climate change. Presentations are welcome for instance on model development, validation, uncertainty analysis, risk assessment frameworks as well as presentations about the application of damage models in case studies. Abstracts are sought from those involved in both the theoretical and practical aspects related to these topics.
Excellent submissions which are deemed important contributions to the session will be classified as “solicited talks”.