Central Europe Flooding

Custom Event Sets | Summary
Posting Date: October 1, 2024, 6:00:00 AM

Verisk estimates that insured industry losses from the flooding in Czechia, Poland, and Austria in September 2024 will range from EUR 2 billion (USD 2.2 billion) to EUR 3 billion (~USD 3.4 billion)

ALERT™ subscribers can now download Touchstone® and Touchstone Re™ event sets, industry loss-based similar stochastic events (SSEs) by country, and a shapefile of the base modeled flood extents from the Downloads tab for this posting. See commentary in the download for the industry loss based similar stochastic events for further guidance on how to best utilize them. The information provided herein is strictly confidential and is solely for the use of Verisk clients; disclosure to others is prohibited unless noted in your Verisk software license.

Modeling Assumptions

To produce the loss estimates, the Verisk flood team analyzed hourly precipitation fields over Czechia, Poland, and Austria derived from NASA’s Global Precipitation Measurement (GPM) system during September 1 to 18. As the vast majority of losses for this event come from Czechia, Poland, and Austria, the spatial extent of this event set, posted through Verisk’s ALERT service, is limited to these three countries. Perturbations based on the spatial correlation in precipitation accumulations were introduced to the adjusted precipitation fields to generate a large set of precipitation scenarios and, thus, to quantify the uncertainty associated with the precipitation input. This ensemble of precipitation fields (a total of 50 scenarios) was then used to model runoff and river flow.  Each precipitation scenario generated a loss scenario resulting in an ensemble of loss estimates. Based on the estimated loss pattern across the event footprint, five scenarios from the ensemble catalog were selected to represent the range of estimated losses. These five scenarios have been posted for this ALERT. 

The hydrological model was driven by the precipitation from September 1st to 18th with additional routing time for the river flows. Most of the modeled flows peaked between Sep 13th and Sep 18th. The levee failure is probabilistically modeled for rivers where there was no observed information for the event.    

Verisk’s loss estimates include:

• Verisk’s assumed industry insurable exposures, insurance take-up rates, and exposure indexing in Austria, Czechia, and Poland 
• Insured physical damage to property (residential, commercial, industrial, auto, agriculture), both structures and their contents, from both on- and off-floodplain flooding
• Additional living expenses (ALE) for residential claims and business interruption (BI) for commercial claims

Verisk’s loss estimates do not include:

• Losses in Germany or other countries not listed above 
• Losses to uninsured properties
• Losses to infrastructure
• Losses from extra-contractual obligations
• Losses from hazardous waste cleanup, vandalism, or civil commotion, whether directly or indirectly caused by the event
• Demand surge
• Other non-modeled losses

Event Summary

Like the June flood event in Europe that primarily impacted Germany, this event was caused by a Vb (“five-b”) weather system, a relatively unusual setup that can lead to significant extended periods of rainfall thus causing flooding. In this setup, colder air over Europe drives these low-pressure systems southward toward the Mediterranean Sea as they approach the continent.  A Vb system then picks up warm, humid air from over the Mediterranean, leading to prolonged and intense rainfall as it tracks back northward.  The continent-spanning flooding of 2002 - which also caused significant impacts in Germany - was also driven by this Vb setup, shown in the image below:

While this event spread across several European nations over the month of September, some of the worst impacts were observed along the border of Poland and Czechia.  The Polish Prime Minister’s office reported as of 19^th September that the disaster has directly affected 57,000 people, Property damage was extensive, with at least 11,500 residential buildings—both single-family homes and multi-unit structures—either flooded or damaged.  Additionally, more than 6,000 agricultural and commercial buildings, along with more than 700 public-use structures, including schools, kindergartens, sports facilities, administrative buildings, bridges, and roads, were damaged or submerged.  The Czech Insurance Association reported last week that more than 60,000 claims had been received by Czech insurers thus far, with 19.3 billion CZK in insured losses (roughly EUR 770 million or USD 850 million).  The report also indicated that roughly three-fifths of that claim volume was from business insurance claims.  In Austria, while Vienna was spared major impacts from retention basins designed to protect the city, the surrounding region of Lower Austria saw catastrophic impacts, largely from the River Wien, a tributary of the Danube. According to local authorities, the floodwaters in this area were said to be roughly that expected to be experienced once in 1,000 years on a long-term average.  Parts of Germany, Hungary, Romania, Slovakia, and Italy also saw at least some flooding impacts from this event.

The proportion of the ultimate economic impact of this event paid by the insurance industry will vary by country.  In Austria and Czechia, flood insurance take-up rates are relatively high, though lower limits on Flood, especially in Austria, may offset this somewhat in the eventual insured loss tally.  In Poland, a majority of commercial risk is covered, but only a small fraction of homes and autos have flood coverage. Additionally, estimates of actual insurance take up in Poland are somewhat uncertain, thus creating some uncertainty in the reported insurance industry loss estimate for that country.

ALERT Plans

No additional ALERT activity for this event is currently planned.  Please contact your Verisk representative with any additional questions.

Custom Event Sets | Downloads
Posting Date: October 1, 2024, 6:00:00 AM

The information provided herein is strictly confidential and is solely for the use of Verisk clients; disclosure to others is prohibited.

Simulated Event Sets

These event sets contain five custom modeled scenarios for the recent flooding in Austria, Czechia, and Poland.

User Note: Demand Surge for Europe is not currently supported for ALERT event sets in Touchstone v11.5 and v12.x.  Analyses run with this event set in Touchstone v11.5 or v12.x should have demand surge switched off.

Product	Description	Download
Touchstone Re	Selected set of simulated scenarios
Touchstone	Selected set of simulated scenarios

Loss Based Similar Stochastic Event IDs

These stochastic events were selected as best matches to the insured industry loss footprints generated by the custom modeled scenarios in the Simulated Event Set.  Please note the commentary to best utilization of these.

Product	File Type	Description	Download
Touchstone / Re	Excel (xls)	Selected set of stochastic events, with Readme and commentary in Excel format
Touchstone / Re	CSV (csv)	Selected set of stochastic events, formatted for import into Touchstone/Re

Additional Downloads

Note: Additional downloads related to the posting are listed below. Please use the appropriate application to view these files.

Title	File Type	Description	Download
Shapefile of Median Modeled Flood Extent	.zip	A shapefile for the median loss scenario flood footprint from the Simulated Event Set