14 Comments

In all fairness to the NOAA, they do say this: Annual economic damage from U.S. landfalling hurricanes has increased remarkably since 1900, and studies agree (e.g., Pielke et al. 2008; Grinsted et al. 2019) that the dominant driver of the increase has been the historical rise in the amount and economic value of built infrastructure and wealth along the U.S. coast in hurricane-prone regions.

https://www.gfdl.noaa.gov/global-warming-and-hurricanes/

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I know you posted about hurricanes, but is there similar summary level data for the US? All cause diaster losses normalised?

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Does ICA attribute the recent damaging storms to climate change? Have the increase in damage payouts caused disruptions/bankruptcies in the Australian insurance industry? Does the ICA work will local and national builder's organizations to provide input on updating/improving design standards that would improve resiliency?

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Re normalized disaster losses. A very interesting and illuminating diagram. More detail could

be added ... such as ... My guess is that the main "big" causes are : severe drought; floods; tropical cyclones and bushfires. So adding markers that show the years where these events occurred would be interesting. Of course, one would have to be careful with definitions as these categories are not mutually exclusive. Tom.

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It is very interesting to see the regularity of the «spikes» in normalized data. Something going on there?

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why I just renewed

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I did not go to the links but did not see mention in your article of the increase in buildings and infrastructure that has occured since 1967. It there are twice as many buildings in a a loss area then that should translate into twice as many claims hence twice the value before adjusting for inflation.

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Yes, exactly. 👍

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The increase in valuations from 1967 and 1974 are enormous. Not surprising, average house prices seem a huge component.

https://datamentary.net/australian-house-prices-over-the-last-50-years-a-retrospective/

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Exactly

Those years, and Tracy in particular, are a big eye-opener for the insurance community here, showing the importance of normalization methods as another arrow in the quiver of methods.

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Tracy?

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An astonishing and horrifying amount of devastation. It essential wiped out a town of 50,000 people with significant loss of life.

I was on a business trip to Sydney, Australia in 2006 when Cyclone Larry devastated the Queensland Banana Plantations. I mention it because I suspect that it is harder to put a $$ number on lost agricultural production, compared to structures. My wife was on that trip and we traveled up to Port Douglas and the Great Barrier Reef via Cairns and were able to see some of the devastation from the air around Cairns and Innisfall. It also illustrated the benefits of new cyclone resistant building codes.

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