Storms and associated damages in Norway

<p><span dir="ltr" role="presentation">Extreme winds account for more than half of Norway&#8217;s insurance claims related to natural hazards [1].&#160;</span><span dir="ltr" role="presentation">Quantifying windstorm-damage relations is crucial to prepare for and mitigate the effects of future wind&#160;</span><span dir="ltr" role="presentation">events. However, there has never been an attempt to quantify windstorm-damage relations at the municipality level in Norway.&#160;</span><span dir="ltr" role="presentation">The work in hand employs four different damage functions at the municipality level of Norway. Along with the</span><span dir="ltr" role="presentation">&#160;newly proposed modified Prahl damage function [2], an ensemble means of the damage estimates are tested for 356 municipalities in Norway. We evaluate the damage functions in terms&#160;</span><span dir="ltr" role="presentation">of forecast accuracy.&#160;</span><span dir="ltr" role="presentation">The spatial distribution of losses suggests severe&#160;</span><span dir="ltr" role="presentation">damages along the west coast of Norway. </span><span dir="ltr" role="presentation">Further inland in Norway, there are seldom any losses due to&#160;</span><span dir="ltr" role="presentation">Norway&#8217;s unique topography and demography. The losses above the 99.7^th&#160;percentile in each municipality constitute 85% of total national loss, and we focus on this extreme loss class. A significant</span><span dir="ltr" role="presentation">&#160;agreement&#160;</span><span dir="ltr" role="presentation">between the observed and estimated losses at the municipality and national levels indicates that the damage functions are suited for forecasting storm-induced damages. The damage functions are also able to successfully reconstruct the spatial spread and pattern of losses caused by very extreme windstorms.</span></p> <p><strong><span dir="ltr" role="presentation">References</span></strong></p> <div class="textLayer"><span dir="ltr" role="presentation">1]</span> <span dir="ltr" role="presentation">Finance Norway, Natural Disaster Statistics (NASK), (2019)</span><br role="presentation" /><span dir="ltr" role="presentation">[2]</span> <span dir="ltr" role="presentation">B.F. Prahl et al., Applying stochastic small-scale damage functions to German winter storms,</span> <span dir="ltr" role="presentation">Geo</span><span dir="ltr" role="presentation">physical Research Letters</span> <span dir="ltr" role="presentation">39</span><span dir="ltr" role="presentation">, (2012)</span><br role="presentation" /><br /> <div class="endOfContent">&#160;</div> </div> <div class="annotationLayer">&#160;</div>