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Applying stochastic small‐scale damage functions to German winter storms
Author(s) -
Prahl B. F.,
Rybski D.,
Kropp J. P.,
Burghoff O.,
Held H.
Publication year - 2012
Publication title -
geophysical research letters
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 2.007
H-Index - 273
eISSN - 1944-8007
pISSN - 0094-8276
DOI - 10.1029/2012gl050961
Subject(s) - storm , parametrization (atmospheric modeling) , range (aeronautics) , environmental science , monte carlo method , meteorology , wind speed , scale (ratio) , power law , climatology , atmospheric sciences , statistics , mathematics , geography , geology , physics , engineering , cartography , quantum mechanics , aerospace engineering , radiative transfer
Analyzing insurance‐loss data we derive stochastic storm‐damage functions for residential buildings. On district level we fit power‐law relations between daily loss and maximum wind speed, typically spanning more than 4 orders of magnitude. The estimated exponents for 439 German districts roughly range from 8 to 12. In addition, we find correlations among the parameters and socio‐demographic data, which we employ in a simplified parametrization of the damage function with just 3 independent parameters for each district. A Monte Carlo method is used to generate loss estimates and confidence bounds of daily and annual storm damages in Germany. Our approach reproduces the annual progression of winter storm losses and enables to estimate daily losses over a wide range of magnitudes.