When insurance and goodwill are not enough: Bushfire Attack Level (BAL) ratings,risk calculations and disaster resilience in Australia

ABSTRACT

Home and contents insurance is integral to household and community resilience against disasters. Yet many households are underinsured. While causes for underinsurance have been widely researched, changes to Australian building regulations in the last decade has established a new source of insurance miscalculations. Bushfire Attack Level (BAL) ratings can inflate rebuilding costs by 20% or more, yet BAL ratings remain obfuscated to homeowners and are notoriously confusing to navigate. After the October 2013 bushfires in New South Wales, the Blue Mountains Local Recovery Steering Group found that ‘information on the BAL process, the guidelines, the expected costs, the consulting experts and a property’s bushfire-prone status is literally all over the place’. This paper aims to provide clarity on the subject, tracing the precise socio-technical means through which disaster risk is perceived and assessed. The paper conceptualises insurance and risk ratings as calculative devices that provide both a technical solution to reduce financial losses and a philosophical tool for risk rationalisation. It then builds on interviews conducted with residents in the Blue Mountains affected by the 2013 bushfires, to ascertain how such calculative devices practically affect communities at risk. The paper concludes by outlining potential solutions to a confusing and costly problem in Australia, highlighting critical public awareness issues surround BAL ratings, which have profound insurance and wellbeing implications for people rebuilding and recovering from bushfire.     

Adaptation to climate change in Africa: Challenges and opportunities identified from Ethiopia

Africa is widely held to be highly vulnerable to future climate change and Ethiopia is often cited as one of the most extreme examples. With this in mind we seek to identify entry points to integrate short- to medium-term climate risk reduction within development activities in Africa, drawing from experiences in Ethiopia. To achieve this we employ a range of data and methods. We examine the changing nature of climate risks using analysis of recent climate variability, future climate scenarios and their secondary impacts. We assess the effects of climate variability on agricultural production and national GDP. Entry points and knowledge gaps in relation to mainstreaming climate risks in Ethiopia are identified using the Government's plan for poverty reduction. We end with a case study incorporating climate risks through drought insurance within the current social protection programme in Ethiopia, which provides support to 8.3 million people.Rainfall behaviour in Ethiopia shows no marked emergent changes and future climate projections show continued warming but very mixed patterns of rainfall change. Economic analysis highlights sensitivities within the economy to large-scale drought, however, while the effects are clear in major drought years in other years the relationship is weak. For social protection fairly small positive and negative effects on the number of recipients and frequency of cash payments during drought occur under the extreme range of climate model rainfall projections (2020s).Our analysis highlights several important challenges and opportunities for addressing climate risks. Challenges primarily relate to the large uncertainties in climate projections for parts of Africa, a weak evidence base of complex, often non-deterministic, climate-society interactions and institutional issues. Opportunities relate to the potential for low-regrets measures to reduce vulnerability to current climate variability which can be integrated with relatively modest effort within a shift in Africa from a disaster-focused view of climate to a long-term perspective that emphasises livelihood security and vulnerability reduction.     

安徽省夏玉米干旱天气指数保险产品设计及应用

利用安徽省夏玉米种植区15个农业气象观测站点1971—2010年的逐日降水资料并结合区域夏玉米抽雄-乳熟期(产量形成关键期)的降水距平与夏玉米干旱减产率进行分析,建立了干旱天气指数模型。提出夏玉米干旱的保险赔付标准,并利用各市(县)的干旱风险评估结果修订干旱天气指数保险费率,最终得到各地区的夏玉米干旱天气指数保险产品。将设计的保险产品在安徽省淮北市濉溪县试验应用,该产品可以基本反映实际夏玉米干旱风险状况,有助于农业保险公司客观、快捷地提供农业灾害的经济补偿。     

Climate Change,Extreme Events and the Canadian Insurance Industry

Natural Hazards - At the same time that a scientific consensus has arisen that the world will most likely experience a changing climate in the near future, with more frequent extreme events of some...     

震灾保险新制式的理论依据及其科学内涵

震灾保险新制式是建立在新观念，新思维，新概仿之上的一种独特的保险机制，本文通过对其理论基础以及科学－社会意义的阐述，进一步揭示了这一新型制式的实质和内涵。     

建筑物地震保险的若干问题

将商业保险引入建筑物防震减灾是减少地震损失的一种有效经济手段。对建筑物地震保险进行讨论,对地震保险的形式、承保—理赔机制、保险基金等主要问题作了详细的阐述,建议将年震害期望损失比作为纯费率厘定的主要原则,同时以未来一段时间内的最大期望损失率估算地震保险基金的规模。     

我国开展地震保险的必要性、有利条件、模式选择

立足于中国地震风险的定量分析和巨灾保险理论，对国外有代表性的地震保险制度进行了比较性研究。认为我国幅员辽阔有利于分散风险，国外地震保险的成功经验可以应用于我国，而适应于我国的地震保险制度设计未必可以应用于其他国家。建议我国地震保险制度的最佳方案是在政策上采用新西兰的法定模式，在分保技术上采用日本模式，并阐述了这一组合模式的财政、保险和投保人的三赢原理，说明了我国地震风险分析技术已经具备了支持这一制度的能力。     

Development of an earthquake loss model for Turkish catastrophe insurance

Following the devastating Kocaeli and Düzce earthquakes of August andNovember 1999, the Turkish Government was faced with an enormousfinancial burden as a result of its statutory obligation to cover the full costsof rebuilding. In order to offset this liability in the future – which has hadan adverse effect on the Government's economic programme – acompulsory earthquake insurance scheme has been introduced for allhouseholders in Turkey. A key element for successful implementation ofthis novel and ambitious programme is the transfer of the earthquake riskabsorbed by the Turkish Catastrophe Insurance Pool (TCIP) to theinternational reinsurance market. An earthquake loss model, described inthis paper, has been developed for the TCIP to serve as a basis for thedecision-making process with respect to the pricing of its insurance policy,risk control, the purchase of reinsurance, and the transfer of seismic risk.Sample results of the loss calculations are presented.     

地震灾害经济学研究

本专辑所述内容是地震灾害经济学研究课题的一部分，作者简介地介绍了这一研究的现状和发展，对其主要问题，如地震损失评估的定量经济学方法，地震科研与发展的经济问题，地震长期预报的经济影响，地震危险和地震保险的研究及中国历史地震经济损失的推断等作了概括和分析；着重介绍了作者关于地震经济损失的投入产出分析；石油化工企业地震灾害风险管理研究以及用于地震保险业务的中国部分地震经济损失估计和世界部分地震经济损失数     

云南省地震保险研究的优势与不足

地震保险是实现社会互助、减轻国家经济负担、提高抗震救灾能力的有效途径。在国家地震局和中国人民保险总公司的支持下，云南省地震局与云南省保险公司合作，于１９９０年率先开展了地震保险领域的课题研究，现已取得一定的成果。本文就云南省开展该项研究的优势、研究成果和不足等作了介绍。