Page - 137 - in Loss and Damage from Climate Change - Concepts, Methods and Policy Options

5 Attribution:HowIs ItRelevant forLoss… 137 events, demonstratinghowthis areaofworkmightbe integratedwithattributionof climateandweather events (Sect. 5.3.1) and impacts (Sect. 5.3.2). 5.3.4 AssessingandAnalysingLossesandDamages fromDisasters TounderstandL&Dfromanthropogenicclimatechange, it isalso important tocon- sider disaster assessments and disaster research.Before the establishment ofL&D as an area within the UNFCCC, there was already a great deal of work seeking to quantify and analyse losses and damages from natural hazards. Not all of this workexaminescausality,andthereforemightnotbeconsideredattributionresearch, but integratingknowledge, expertise, andanalysis tools fromdisaster researchwith climate change and climate impacts attribution research (Sects. 5.3.1, 5.3.2, 5.3.3) could be a fruitfulway to obtain a fuller understanding of L&D, and in particular to compare the influenceof anthropogenic climate changewithdriversof exposure andvulnerability. Loss anddamageassessments are routinelyconductedaftermajordisasters, and the results arewidely available indisaster databases includingat global (EM-DAT: Guha-Sapiretal.2009;DesInventar2015),andnational levels.Reinsurancecompa- nies alsoholddisaster databases,27 but these are generally not publically available. Disasterdatabasesrepresentanimpressiveresource,howeverthequality,consistency andcompletenessvariesbetween regionsandbetweenevents.The results alsovary betweendatasets: thereisnoconsensusabouthowtocollectdatafollowingdisasters (Huggel et al. 2015b), and differentmethodologies can have quite different results (Kronetal.2012).Collectingdataabout lossesanddamagesfromslowonsetevents suchasdrought isverychallenging,due to the timescalesofdatacollection,and the manyotherdriverswhichmightplayaroleover this longer timeperiod.Developing countriesarepoorlyrepresented(Galletal.2009),andinparticular there isa lackof informationat the subnational scale invulnerablecountries (Huggel et al. 2015b). Disasterriskresearchusesthesedatabasestoexaminetrendsinlossesfromdisas- ters, includingextremeweatherevents,andincludinganalysisofcausalrelationships with climatic variability (Bouwer 2011; chapter byBouwer 2018). It is generally accepted that theobservedglobal increase indisaster losses is largelyattributable to increases in exposure to hazard,withmorewealth situated in locations that are at risk(Bouwer2011; IPCC2012).Researchontheroleofchanges invulnerabilityon observedlossesanddamagesisstillveryscarceandneedstobeinvestigatedinmore detail, although there is evidence that vulnerability tofloodhazard is decreasing in someplaces(MechlerandBouwer2015;Jongmanetal.2015;Kreibichetal.2017). Disaster databases often focus on a fewkeyvariables such asmonetary losses and fatalities.The rangeof lossesanddamagesconsideredunder theUNFCCCextends farbeyond thesequantities (Serdecznyetal.2016)and therefore it isalso important 27E.g.www.munichre.com/natcatservice;www.swissre.com/sigma.