Damage assessment in the stress field of scale , comparability and transferability

Damage assessment is an important task requested in very different contexts. On the one hand very detailed studies are required for cost benefit analysis, on the other hand vulnerability and risk needs to be evaluated for political decisions and emergency situations (i.e. loss estimation of a large scale flood event). Even though a lot of studies have been performed and a lot of different methods are available by now, it is very difficult to use the results in the decision making process, as many methods are poorly described or are based on very special data, and therefore cannot be compared to each other. The attempt of regional (German federal state level) standardizations based on very detailed object based approaches are shown. Additionally, a European wide data set for asset mapping is described and a set of application examples is given. It is designed to enable users to compare the impact of different types of hazard. To take it one step further, a global map for vulnerability is presented that can be used to set up a monetary based data set if detailed statistical data is not available. Every type of data set and methodology has its special tasks to fulfil but there is also a high demand for harmonisation and comparability between different studies to enable better decision making. The next demand on data sets and methodologies is to perform time sequence analyses, therefore all data sets and methods presented fulfil the requirement of being updated regularly. 1 Fields of application of damage assessment

Studies in the frame of research projects most of the time include a lot of data gathering.This also applies to some very local cost benefit analysis.Such pioneering studies are very important concerning new knowledge gain.In most situations however, information like the exact level of the base floor, storey height, availability and use of cellars or even the building materials used are not available in the public digital data sets and often underlie the restrictions of data privacy protection.Due to these facts the results of these studies may be very beneficiary for the local usage but cannot be transferred to any other community or region not providing this kind of information.Even if there is enough budget available for data gathering, very detailed data cannot be collected for large regions within a short period of time.In the long term there is some hope that more data will be available in the future; but in the meantime one has to live with aggregated statistical data and has to handle the inhomogeneity of data sources.Bearing this in mind, existing damage functions have to be checked and modified first, to adapt them to the planned usage.This requires to read and understand the assumptions made in the damage functions used (if such a description is available) and as well describe the assumptions made by oneself.As an example, the assumption that 70% of all cars can be removed from a certain area due to enough warning time limits the maximum value of a function to 30%.This function has been used in the Danube FloodRisk project in the context of fluvial flooding (see figure 2).Using the same function for a flashflood prone area would lead to erroneous results because warning time is much shorter for flash flood events.3 Local to regional scale On local to regional scale object based approaches are favoured.In the context of flooding the focus is on buildings, where cadastral data is available.Having the building footprint, the usage of the building and sometimes even the height of the building, the asset totals acquired from national or federal statistics can be distributed to the single object.Due to the large amount of data and the complex data model, this is done by a well performing relational data base.Once such a data base model is implemented, aggregations using either interactive tools or outlines of statistical or political units can be performed within seconds.
The damage calculation itself is also performed using the database.Beforehand, buildings need to be intersected with the water depth information, for example classified by 5cm contours.

Damage calculation
Damage assessment can be conducted in two different ways: either by applying damage functions that provide a direct output of losses in monetary value, or by following a two-step approach which first calculates the assets and then applies damage functions that calculate the losses as a percentage.
BEAM resorts to the second approach.Thus, the underlying asset layers can be used for various types of hazards (e.g. in a multi risk analysis) and the damage functions can be applied to different regions.For example, the damage function for an average car can be the same in different countries or regions, although the age and value of an average car will probably differ.The damage functions applied are not part of the BEAM-product itself, but can be supplied to potential users from the various projects that have been using the BEAM dataset (see chapter 4.4 and figure 2) or they can be newly created for additional types of hazard on demand.Figure 6 illustrates the general workflow from damage calculations to the creation of hazard maps for different kinds of natural hazard.

Fields of application
As it is the idea of the BEAM dataset to be applied to different types of natural hazards and therewith to enable the comparison of their impact to a society, it has been tested and applied to a set of them.
) The different practical applications proved the usability of the product for different types of hazards.
The application in 12 European countries has made it somehow a standard in this domain.The data set created in the IncREO project is enhanced with some additional non-monetary information like elements at risk and population density.

Global Vulnerability Map
The Global Resilience Map and the Global Vulnerability Map have also been designed and calculated within the frame of the IncREO project.Due to the fact that a lot of statistical data is not available on a global scale, a different approach was needed, to extend assets and damage estimations towards a global scale.Here the aim is not to do cost benefit analysis but to be able to do risk analysis and allocate hot spots.
The Global Resilience Map displays the resilience of the population with respect to natural hazards on a global scale.As there was no index available having a global coverage, this map was created by combining a set of different indices.Also, the map was not meant to show only a single value per country but to differentiate within the countries.To achieve this, the population density was used to break down these indices per country.Additional factors for disaggregating indices were derived by calculating the distance to airports and sea ports because they reflect the accessibility for national and international rescue forces in case of a disaster.Additionally, the gross national product (US$) or the income per person has been used for the evaluation: A higher income usually supports a better equipment and availability of supplies.Population density is another indicator to assess availability of infrastructure and equipment.In case of an event the needed equipment and infrastructure might not be available in sparsely inhabited areas, while in very densely populated areas the existing infrastructure might not suffice due to the high number of affected people.So there is an optimum in population density that is evaluated following the scheme in Figure 8.The processing of data is shown in in Figure 9. Marked in green you find the input data used in the calculation process, marked in blue are intermediate products and processes.
The resulting raster has values reaching from 1 to 5 where 1 is the lowest resilience and 5 the highest.
To derive the vulnerability using the concept of resilience described above, the population density is used as main impact factor for the vulnerability.So the more people live at a certain place, the higher the vulnerability.To calculate the vulnerability, the value gained from the population reclassification is divided by the value of the global resilience map.
The resulting raster has values reaching from 0 to 5 where 0 is the lowest vulnerability and 5 the highest.
To obtain a result similar to a risk map, the vulnerability needs to be intersected with a hazard map.The values of the vulnerability index can be multiplied with a hazard index, resulting in a map containing some type of risk-zoning.Regarding the global scale there are usually some limitations concerning the hazard zoning, because most of the time there is limited information about intensity or recurrence intervals.Still such maps display hot spots very well and are a good source of information for internationally operating companies and organisations, especially ones working in disaster relief.

Figure 2 .
Figure 2. Damage functions being used for the Danube Atlas, the damage functions where derived from pre-existing ones and agreed on by an international expert group [2]

Figure 9 .
Figure 9. Scheme showing the generation of the Global Vulnerability Map from the Global Resilience Map [4]

Figure 10 .
Figure 10.Printed example from the Global Vulnerability Map, the data set is available globally [4]