Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of contributors
- Foreword
- Preface
- The significance of weather and climate extremes to society: an introduction
- I Defining and modeling the nature of weather and climate extremes
- II Impacts of weather and climate extremes
- 8 Extreme climatic events and their impacts: examples from the Swiss Alps
- 9 The impact of weather and climate extremes on coral growth
- 10 Forecasting US insured hurricane losses
- 11 Integrating hurricane loss models with climate models
- 12 An exploration of trends in normalized weather-related catastrophe losses
- 13 An overview of the impact of climate change on the insurance industry
- 14 Toward a comprehensive loss inventory of weather and climate hazards
- 15 The catastrophe modeling response to Hurricane Katrina
- 16 The Risk Prediction Initiative: a successful science–business partnership for analyzing natural hazard risk
- Index
- Plate section
- References
15 - The catastrophe modeling response to Hurricane Katrina
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 14 September 2009
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of contributors
- Foreword
- Preface
- The significance of weather and climate extremes to society: an introduction
- I Defining and modeling the nature of weather and climate extremes
- II Impacts of weather and climate extremes
- 8 Extreme climatic events and their impacts: examples from the Swiss Alps
- 9 The impact of weather and climate extremes on coral growth
- 10 Forecasting US insured hurricane losses
- 11 Integrating hurricane loss models with climate models
- 12 An exploration of trends in normalized weather-related catastrophe losses
- 13 An overview of the impact of climate change on the insurance industry
- 14 Toward a comprehensive loss inventory of weather and climate hazards
- 15 The catastrophe modeling response to Hurricane Katrina
- 16 The Risk Prediction Initiative: a successful science–business partnership for analyzing natural hazard risk
- Index
- Plate section
- References
Summary
Introduction
Hurricane Katrina was the most destructive US natural disaster in history and the most expensive catastrophe loss ever for the global insurance industry. The occurrence of Hurricane Katrina, and the associated flooding of New Orleans, was also by far the greatest US catastrophe to have occurred since the widespread application of catastrophe models in the mid 1990s. The combination of catastrophic wind and flood losses proved to be a potent test of the underlying methodologies and procedures of catastrophe loss modeling. This chapter reviews the impact of Hurricane Katrina and the response of Risk Management Solutions (RMS) to the event, both in the immediate aftermath and then in galvanizing new research to expand the agenda for catastrophe loss modeling in order to gain a more comprehensive perspective on catastrophe risk costs.
The legacy of Hurricane Katrina has meant that the agenda of catastrophe modeling has become more complex and comprehensive in attempting to capture all facets of loss, incorporating an expanded range of nonlinearities that ramp up losses caused by the largest catastrophes. The insurance industry has also learned from the experience to question the validity and comprehensiveness of the data that are entered into the models and how the models are employed to explore the sensitivity of predicted losses.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Climate Extremes and Society , pp. 296 - 319Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2008
References
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