eprintid: 1458288
rev_number: 28
eprint_status: archive
userid: 608
dir: disk0/01/45/82/88
datestamp: 2014-12-12 19:44:19
lastmod: 2021-10-23 23:07:19
status_changed: 2016-03-09 11:54:54
type: article
metadata_visibility: show
item_issues_count: 0
creators_name: Visser, H
creators_name: Petersen, AC
creators_name: Ligtvoet, W
title: On the relation between weather-related disaster impacts, vulnerability and climate change
ispublished: pub
divisions: UCL
divisions: B04
divisions: C05
divisions: J39
note: Copyright © The Author(s) 2014. This article is published with open access at Springerlink.com.
abstract: Disasters such as floods, storms, heatwaves and droughts can have enormous implications for health, the environment and economic development. In this article, we address the question of how climate change might have influenced the impact of weather-related disasters. This relation is not straightforward, since disaster burden is not influenced by weather and climate events alone—other drivers are growth in population and wealth, and changes in vulnerability. We normalized disaster impacts, analyzed trends in the data and compared them with trends in extreme weather and climate events and vulnerability, following a 3 by 4 by 3 set-up, with three disaster burden categories, four regions and three extreme weather event categories. The trends in normalized disaster impacts show large differences between regions and weather event categories. Despite these variations, our overall conclusion is that the increasing exposure of people and economic assets is the major cause of increasing trends in disaster impacts. This holds for long-term trends in economic losses as well as the number of people affected. We also found similar, though more qualitative, results for the number of people killed; in all three cases, the role played by climate change cannot be excluded. Furthermore, we found that trends in historic vulnerability tend to be stable over time, despite adaptation measures taken by countries. Based on these findings, we derived disaster impact projections for the coming decades. We argue that projections beyond 2030 are too uncertain, not only due to unknown changes in vulnerability, but also due to increasing non-stationarities in normalization relations.
date: 2014-08
official_url: http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s10584-014-1179-z
vfaculties: VENG
oa_status: green
full_text_type: pub
language: eng
primo: open
primo_central: open_green
verified: verified_manual
elements_source: crossref
elements_id: 999089
doi: 10.1007/s10584-014-1179-z
lyricists_name: Petersen, Arthur
lyricists_id: APETE53
full_text_status: public
publication: Climatic Change
volume: 125
number: 3
pagerange: 461-477
issn: 1573-1480
citation:        Visser, H;    Petersen, AC;    Ligtvoet, W;      (2014)    On the relation between weather-related disaster impacts, vulnerability and climate change.                   Climatic Change , 125  (3)   pp. 461-477.    10.1007/s10584-014-1179-z <https://doi.org/10.1007/s10584-014-1179-z>.       Green open access   
 
document_url: https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/1458288/1/Petersen_Visser%20et%20al%20Climatic%20Change%202014.pdf