A high-resolution wind damage model for Europe

Abstract

AbstractExtreme wind events are among the costliest natural disasters in Europe, causing severe damages every year. Despite the significant impact, damages related to windstorms are an understudied topic in academia. For damage estimates, the community mostly relies on post-disaster insurance data, which is often not publicly available. Few studies offer more generic tools, but again these are often based on non-disclosed insurance data. To offer a generic, high-resolution, reproducible, and publicly accessible tool, this study presents a wind damage model that is built around publicly available hazard, exposure, and vulnerability data. We apply the model to assess building damages related to extratropical storms in Europe, but the methodology is applicable globally, given data availability, and to other hazards for which similar risk frameworks can be applied. The results show that for Europe, coastal regions are affected the most, with the United Kingdom, Ireland, Germany, France, the Netherlands, and Denmark as most affected countries. We find that the modelled damage estimates are in line with reported damages for a series of historical storms. The model is distributed as an open-source model to offer a transparent and useable windstorm damage model to a broad audience.