Over the past decade, average economic losses from disasters stand at USD 190 billion per year, while average insured losses were USD 60 billion per year. This century, more than one million people have already lost their lives to disasters. These figures were highlighted by the insurance industry in its global statement on disaster risk reduction, which was launched at the 3rd United Nations World Conference on Disaster Risk Reduction held in Sendai, Japan in March 2015. The statement was produced by the UNEP FI Principles for Sustainable Insurance (PSI) Initiative;a collaboration between the United Nations and the insurance industry.
The need of the hour therefore is for reducing disaster risk, investing in pre-disaster reslience and risk awareness spread among impacted stakeholders to make change happen and adopt structured data driven approaches to funding and implementing measures for disaster risk reduction.
The Global Risk Map
The Global Risk Map is the second phase of the PSI Global Resilience Project, which is led by Insurance Australia Group (IAG). The Map was introduced at a major PSI event in Switzerland in May 2015, and formally launched at a global insurance industry event in New York in June 2015.
The Global Risk Map covers major natural hazard events over the past 115 years. The map highlights the social and economic devastation caused by cyclones, floods, earthquakes and related perils, and identifies the regions/countries most vulnerable to these natural hazards. The map achieves this by assessing relevant core data such as available disaster statistics, social and economic variables, and insurance penetration and density.
The Global Risk Map demonstrates the following data through an interactive tool:
- Exposure to cyclones, earthquakes, floods and related perils (geo-coded).
- Cyclone, earthquake, flood and related peril events since 1900 (country level).
- The economic and social impact of these events (county level).
- National-level vulnerability to each of these natural hazards.
- National-level resilience, covering vulnerability and coping capacity, including disaster risk reduction and insurance penetration and density (covering both general and life insurance).
The Map incorporates a range of secondary data sources with 1900 as the Map’s base point year. The social cost of natural disasters is measured by fatalities, while the economic cost is measured by the economic damage sustained (the amount of damage to property, crops, and livestock – as defined by EM-DAT).
The Global Risk Map uses Terria™ technology (OSG compliant), built by the team at National ICT Australia (NICTA). The underlying platform technology allows the user to benefit from the masses of datasets related to the project such as disaster response resources and insurance penetration and density.
Learn more via links : http://globalriskmap.nicta.com.au/