Polish coastal zone is thought to be one of the most exposed to sea level rise in Europe. With mean sea levels expected to increase between 28 and 98 cm by the end of the century, and storms increasing in severity, accurate estimates of the consequences of those phenomena are needed. Recent advances in quality and availability of spatial data in Poland made possible the reassessment of previous estimates of inundation caused by sea level rise. Up-to-date, detailed information on land use, population and buildings was used here to calculate their exposure to floods at a broad range of scenarios. Inclusion of a highresolution digital elevation model contributed to a further improvement in estimates. The results revealed that even by using a static ''bathtub fill'' approach, the amount of exposed land, population or assets is significantly smaller than indicated in previous assessments. In the perspective of the twenty-first century, direct damages caused by sea level rise will be small and adaptation costs will not be significant. However, the increase in the frequency of storm surges could elevate the risk to the population and economy, but cost-effective flood protection measures would be able to mitigate the risk. The exposure of different kinds of assets and sectors of the economy varies to a large extent, though the structural breakdown of potential losses is remarkably stable between scenarios.
Abstract. Natural hazards affect many types of tangible assets, the most valuable of which are often residential assets, comprising buildings and household contents. Yet, information necessary to derive exposure in terms of monetary value at the level of individual houses is often not available. This includes building type, size, quality, or age. In this study, we provide a universal method for estimating exposure of residential assets using only publicly available or open data. Using building footprints (polygons) from OpenStreetMap as a starting point, we utilized high-resolution elevation models of 30 European capitals and pan-European raster datasets to construct a Bayesian-network-based model that is able to predict building height. The model was then validated with a dataset of (1) buildings in Poland endangered by sea level rise, for which the number of floors is known, and (2) a sample of Dutch and German houses affected in the past by fluvial and pluvial floods, for which usable floor space area is known. Floor space of buildings is an important basis for approximating their economic value, including household contents. Here, we provide average national-level gross replacement costs of the stock of residential assets in 30 European countries, in nominal and real prices, covering the years 2000–2017. We either relied on existing estimates of the total stock of assets or made new calculations using the perpetual inventory method, which were then translated into exposure per square metre of floor space using data on countries' dwelling stocks. The study shows that the resulting standardized residential exposure values provide much better coverage and consistency compared to previous studies.
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