Institute of Geography

Research

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Infrastructure and systemic vulnerability

Main Research: Simone Loreti, Tsolmongerel Papilloud

Overview / Scientific Gap

At a Swiss national level, up to nearly 45% of the natural damage to buildings is due to floods phenomena (source: AEAI statistics for 2004-2013). Despite the flood hazard are already well known and indicated on the hazard maps, the social, environmental and economic impacts are still poorly understood and documented especially for different infrastructure on a national level.

Goals

In this research project we study potential interruptions of the Swiss infrastructure network (i.e. road and rail networks) due to flooding. In particular, (i) we analyse the influence of different methods to deduce the exposure of infrastructure on a national level, (ii) we investigate the variations of the Swiss infrastructure topology with floods and (ii) we estimate the systemic vulnerability of the infrastructure by analysing the number of people who are affected in presence of floods due to interruption of e.g. the road network. This includes a direct local impact as well as if people in the region or on the national level are affected in their mobility (to go to work, schools, hospitals, ...).

Methods

This research will be conducted with innovative inter-disciplinary approaches, by employing Network Science and Human Mobility modelling techniques. Measurements of network’s centrality, costs, efficiency, robustness, resilience and clustering will be numerically calculated to characterize the infrastructure network changes due to floods. The estimation of the human flows through the Swiss infrastructure network will be achieved in collaboration with Swisscom, the major telecommunication company in Switzerland, by employing anonymised mobile phone records.

Results

The output of this research will allow to know (i) the most significant/vulnerable parts of the Swiss infrastructure network without and with floods, (ii) evaluation of the Swiss human mobility for a time period of days/weeks without and with floods.

Flood risk in Nigeria

Flood related hazards and losses have been on increase in Africa for the past decades. Despite these losses, no standard damage and vulnerability assessment tools are available for predominant regional building types. Using empirical data from the case study region, this research is focused on developing vulnerability assessment tools for buildings using the indicator framework. It aims to identify major damage drivers for regional building types so as to help develop effective strategies for risk reduction.

Funding: Swiss Government Excellence Scholarship

Research location: Suleja, Nigeria

Employees: Mark Malgwi & Margreth Keiler

Cluster Risk & Resilience

Communities within greater mountain regions are facing increasingly severe risks, insecurities and crises in the context of extreme events and related disasters. Further they have to contend with current and future situations of high uncertainty. If such communities or regions are confronted with high economic and social losses during a disaster, the question arises why there is so little progress in the ability to mitigate and adapt to natural hazards. The proposed integrative cluster ‘Risk and Resilience’ will address this question and contribute to two central aspects of research in disaster risk reduction:

Understanding the coupling of human and natural systems and the role of the coupling to prevent a hazard from becoming a disaster.
Improve the understanding of the temporal evolution of risk and resilience.

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Physical flood vulnerability of buildings in Switzerland

Lead: Margreth Keiler

Main Research: Mirjam Mertin

Background / research gaps

To assess flood risk of settlements, knowledge on physical vulnerability of flood exposed buildings is crucial. Physical vulnerability is commonly defined as the potential damage expressed as a percentage of the asset’s economic value. It is a popular approach to link the potential damage with key characteristics of the flood, like flood depth or duration. However, case studies show, that this link to flood characteristics is rather weak and that building features, as construction type, determine the physical flood vulnerability too. Moreover, the results on physical flood vulnerability of buildings are hardly transferable to other areas and the application on supra-local level is hampered by the detailed building data required. Further research at the regional to national scale is limited by availability of event data with regard to flood characteristics, building features and damages.

Approach and expected outcome

We use a database of several ten thousand flood claims settled by 15 cantonal insurance companies for buildings in Switzerland. The flood claims are georeferenced at individual building level and can thus be combined with other building data as building features and (potential or occurred) exposure to flood. We apply data mining techniques to detect patterns of relations between recorded losses on the one hand and, building values, characteristics and exposure to floods on the other hand. The results help to quantify the flood vulnerability of buildings in Switzerland and are useful for estimating damages of future flood events. This data driven approach improves quantitative flood risk assessments which in turn inform stakeholders in decision making.

Physical Vulnerability to Torrent Processes

Financing: SNF

Duration: September 2015 - August 2018

Employees: Keiler Margreth, Chow Candace

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Effect and use of instruments for the prevention of elementary injuries

Zur Förderung der Elementarschadenprävention (ESP) an Gebäuden kommen heute bei den kantonalen Gebäudeversicherungen (KGV) diverse Instrumente zum Einsatz. Wenn es Versicherungsnehmer unterlassen, zumutbare Massnahmen zur ESP umzusetzen, gibt es zum Schutz der Solidargemeinschaft auch die Möglichkeit, versicherungsrechtlichen Instrumente anzuwenden, um Schadenzahlungen im Ereignisfall zu reduzieren. Es fehlt bisher ein fundierter Überblick über den heutigen Nutzen, die mögliche Wirkung sowie die allfälligen Nachteile der verfügbaren Instrumente.

Im vorliegenden Projekt wurde ein aktueller Überblick über die angewendeten ESP-Instrumente erarbeitet. Anhand von Schadendaten und Kenngrössen zur Exposition des versicherten Gebäude-Portfolios wurde zudem geprüft, ob sich Unterschiede bei der ESP zwischen verschiedenen KGV statistisch nachweisen lassen.

Für ausgewählte KGV wurden die wichtigsten Instrumente hinsichtlich ihrer Anwendung umfassend bewertet und das mögliche Optimierungspotenzial aufgezeigt. Daraus wurden aus rechtlicher und gesellschaftlicher Sicht für alle KGV Empfehlungen im Sinne von „best practices“ abgeleitet hinsichtlich des Einsatzes von ESP- und versicherungsrechtlichen Instrumenten mit dem Ziel einer optimalen Balance zwischen Prävention und Schadendeckung. Weil mit steigenden Schäden die KGV zunehmend unter Druck sind, die Solidargemeinschaft vor den finanziellen Folgen von vermeidbaren Schäden zu schützen, wurde dieser Aspekt vertieft untersucht.

Das Projekt wurde im Rahmen der 9. Ausschreibung der Präventionsstiftung der Kantonalen Gebäudeversicherungen finanziert. www.praeventionsstiftung.ch

Die Gruppe für Geomorphologie, Naturgefahren- und Risikoforschung bearbeitete das Projekt zusammen mit Ernst Basler + Partner AG Zollikon (Projektleitung) und Cornel Quinto Zürich (Rechtsexperte). Arbeitsschwerpunkte der uni Bern in dieser Gemeinschaft bildeten die Datenaufbereitung und –Analyse zu Gebäude-Exposition und -Schäden, die Mitarbeit und Qualitätssicherung bei der Aufnahme der aktuell angewendeten ESP Instrumente sowie quantitative Aspekte bei der Nutzwertanalyse über verschiedene Instrumentenkombinationen.

Dauer: März 2016 – Dezember 2017

Risk Monitoring

„Monitoring flood risk in Switzerland“ is a research project by Mobiliar Lab for Natural Risks and the Federal Office for Environment of Switzerland FOEN. The project aims at connecting science and practice and is funded by both participating institutions.

The ongoing pre study provides a “state of the art” concerning monitoring of flood risk in science and in political context likewise. Focus of the study is the gathering of existing knowledge, as well as (not yet) implemented instruments and methods regarding flood risk monitoring. Based on the findings of this pre study, research questions, aims and methods of the main project will be further specified.