The Hub includes data visualisations and other tools to assess the role the insurance industry can play in helping communities impacted by disasters.
The variety of case studies in the Hub range from the floods in Bangladesh in 2004 to the Kashmir earthquake in Pakistan in 2005 to Superstorm Sandy in the US in 2012 to the Germany floods of 2013, and typhoons in the Philippines and Vietnam in 2013 and 2017, respectively.
Graphs included in the Hub include a comparison of economic and societal recovery speed, and the quality of recovery in terms of the economy, amenities, and safety.
The Hub draws on a recent report co-authored by AXA XL, which highlights that the global annual average loss from natural disasters has risen from $27 billion during 1970-80 to nearly $200 billion during 2010-2019.
This increase has been driven mostly by global economic development and the rising value of assets in hazardous areas, particularly in fast-growing regions such as Southeast Asia.
“The gap between well managed and badly managed disasters is striking and, unfortunately, it is always the poorer communities who bear the brunt, be it in developed or emerging economies,” said Jonathan Gale, Chief Underwriting Officer – Reinsurance, AXA XL, in the Foreword to the Report.
“Climate Risk is at the heart of this study, and it is important to remember that risk is a function of hazard, exposure, and vulnerability,” he added.
“Changes in Climate Risk are not just driven by a changing hazard; understanding exposure change and the vulnerability of that exposure as values and wealth builds in cities, particularly in emerging economies, is critical to understanding the ever-increasing gap between economic loss and insured loss.”
Oliver Carpenter, Environmental Risk Research Lead at the Cambridge Centre for Risk Studies, also commented: “We hope the new Cambridge Centre for Risk Studies Disaster Recovery Hub will prove an invaluable tool to public officials, companies, NGOs and others who play a role in disaster recovery efforts. The assembled case studies provide contrasting narratives of success and failure in recovering quickly from catastrophes and building disaster resilience, and clearly outlines the important role played by insurance in these endeavours.”
