Topic 2
Climate Change Resilience
The worldwide impact of climate change is now well entrenched in our daily lives. The question is how to make our cities, towns and communities more resilient to climate impacts. The impacts for 2023 are well summarised by the reinsurer Swiss Re:
Severe convection storms - The US is particularly prone to SCS due to its geographical location. In 2023, the amount of USD 50 billion insured losses for US SCS activity was exceeded for the first time — and it is set to keep rising. The US has experienced 18 events year to date which each caused insured losses of USD 1 billion and above.
Hurricanes, floods, wildfires and earthquakes - While losses from the North Atlantic hurricane season remain below average in 2023 to date, hurricane Otis will likely become the costliest insured event in Mexico. In New Zealand, floods and cyclones caused the costliest weather-related insured losses ever for the country (USD 2.4 billion), while the wildfires on Maui are estimated to become the costliest insured loss event ever for the state of Hawaii (USD 3.5 billion).
Nat Cat events accounted for US $ 260 billion of economic losses in 2023 which are down 9% from the 286 billion losses in 2022. By way of comparison insured losses in 2023 were US $ 100 billion were down 25% when compared to the 2022 figure of US $ 133 billion. It is important to note that the YOY economic and insured losses well exceeded the 10-year averages.
Urban development, wealth accumulation in disaster-prone areas and inflation are key factors at play, turning extreme weather into ever rising natural catastrophe losses.
Rising temperatures are further increasing the risk of severe droughts and wildfires. With 2023 being the warmest year on record, the effects of climate change are becoming apparent.
At UiSee we help Insurers develop strategies to better monitor and respond to Climate Events with a combination of AI and Earth Observation (EO) based information to predict and prevent the impacts and losses associated with global climate risk.
