Assessment of pluvial flood-related physical climate risk in Lausanne

Several types of climate extreme events have become more frequent in the past decades worldwide and particularly in Switzerland, and this trend is expected to continue. An accurate assessment of associated impacts is of prime importance to allow society and organizations to adapt to climate change. In this kick-off project, we propose to quantify physical climate risk for pluvial flood events in the current and future climates for the Lausanne area. We adopt an interdisciplinary approach consisting of modeling flow depth, exposure and vulnerability at the resolution of individual buildings, and derive a distribution of losses. The risk assessment will be systematic (not only for a specific portfolio of insured buildings), public, at a very high resolution, for current and future climates, and expressed in terms of financial losses. The results will be made publicly available on an interactive platform allowing geographical visualization of various features of risk (e.g., return levels) at the building scale.

Who is involved?

• Erwan Koch, Scientific and Executive Director of the Expertise Center for Climate Extremes (ECCE)
• Alexis Berne, Associate Professor, Environmental Remote Sensing Laboratory, EPFL
• Nadav Peleg, Assistant Professor, FGSE and ECCE, UNIL
• Amrie Singh,  Postdoctoral researcher, ECCE, UNIL  
• Hansjoerg Albrecher, Professor, HEC and ECCE, UNIL
• Valérie Chavez, Professor, HEC and ECCE, UNIL
• Urs Germann, Head of Radar, Satellite and Nowcasting Division, MeteoSwiss
• Eric Jondeau, Professor, HEC and ECCE, UNIL
• Laurent Marescot, Senior Director Markets and Products, Moody’s RMS
• Grégoire Mariéthoz, Professor, FGSE and ECCE, UNIL
• Marc Wüest, Responsible for Internal Natural Catastrophe Models and Financial Module, Swiss Re