What can we learn from public compensation efforts following a multi-hazard event? The 2020 Gloria storm in Catalonia.

Globally, the absence of a fully private insurance market for post-disaster recovery makes public sector involvement essential when insurance is either unaffordable or unavailable. Spain's public-sector-driven disaster risk response system offers a valuable case for analyzing post-disaster public compensation. The Gloria storm in January 2020, a significant multi-hazard event that activated all Spanish disaster compensation programs, serves as an ideal example to assess public intervention in disaster response. Hence, this study aims to assess the public sector’s role in mitigating financial losses during multi-hazard events, using Gloria storm as a case study. We analyze regional disaster losses through a three-step approach: compiling a recovery database, assessing key hazards, and examining the relationship between uninsured asset damages and hazard likelihood. Preliminary results show that the storm caused widespread damage, with recovery costs totaling 264 million Euros. In Spain, government interventions in disaster risk response are composed of fully public and public-private partnership (PPP) funds. Regarding the distribution of funding, the results reveal a distinction in asset coverage. Fully public funds are essential for restoring community services and infrastructure, especially in inland areas, focusing on sectors like water management, environment, culture, agriculture, and transportation. Public-private partnerships fund more privately-oriented assets, such as trade, industry, residential properties, vehicles, and office spaces, primarily in coastal and northern inland regions. Moreover, public funding prioritizes hazard type first, then impacted assets, while PPPs focus on directly funding affected assets without considering the hazard type. Although public compensation is not tailored to multi-hazard events, we identify municipalities affected by multiple hazards, showing more severe overall damage in areas with also a higher concentration of affected assets. Finally, the results prove that the hazard likelihood (return period) is not appropriate for understanding public compensation distribution, as no clear correlation with loss costs is found, suggesting that other factors should be considered. This study highlights the importance of assessing and understanding the distribution of public compensation, giving new insights in loss assessment of typically uninsured assets.