Zurich report finds risk management shortfalls exacerbated storm Bernd

Simply blaming the catastrophic impact of severe weather event Bernd that caused devastating flooding and damage of up to €50bn across western Germany and other parts of Europe on climate change is not good enough, according to Zurich.

The insurer has carried out an in-depth analysis of Bernd and its implications, and concludes that inadequate understanding of floods, a “problematic” structure for rebuilding and insufficient pre-emptive risk reduction measures played a key role in the disaster.

“In July 2021, the extreme weather event Bernd caused extensive damage and great human suffering, especially in western Germany. Yet this was not inevitable. Even an extreme weather event of this magnitude can, in principle, be detected in time, and its potential consequences be addressed with better outcomes,” says Zurich.

This is the conclusion reached by Zurich Insurance’s Post-Event Review Capability analysis, carried out by experts from the Zurich Flood Resilience Program, the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies, the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis, ISET-International and the London School of Economics.

The report on the disaster is based on thousands of emails, together with local meetings with disaster victims and emergency personnel. The report sets out recommendations to policymakers at the local, state and federal levels on how to better address issues such as early warnings, disaster management structures, flood prevention and residents’ risk awareness, to ensure greater safety in the future.

“One clear factor emerges from this analysis: reducing last year’s disaster to an unforeseeable extreme weather event, caused by climate change, with consequences against which we are powerless, fails to recognise the complexities of our current reality,” states Zurich.

The insurer says that imprecise forecasts and modelling were a problem.

“While forecasts captured well the overall intensity of the extreme weather event, accurate predictions regarding the flood levels were limited to major rivers such as the Rhine and Moselle. For minor rivers, no forecasts were provided with any level of accuracy,” it states.

“There were many reasons for this: inadequate collaboration between meteorological and hydrological forecasting services and the local disaster management and emergency services was compounded by too few gauge stations supplying data for flood forecasting. Moreover, the accuracy of flood models is nowhere near adequate,” concludes the report.

Inadequate flood hazard maps could also become a problem in the future, says Zurich.

“Flood maps and the zoning of floodplains must not be based on ‘average events’ alone, but should also address worst-case flood scenarios,” cautioned Horst Nussbaumer, chief claims and operating officer for Zurich in Germany.

“If we work from realistic assumptions, we are able to outline the most drastic potential effects of flooding, for example those caused by saturated soils or blockages from debris. This in turn will support the risk assessment for future flood events. In the future, municipalities should consider our findings more closely when drawing up zoning and development plans,” said Nussbaumer.

Inadequate early warning systems were also a factor, according to Zurich.

Current early warning systems such as the MoWaS modular warning system, which includes the KATWARN and NINA warning app services, either provided too little, contradictory or no information at all, it says. “Neither those issuing nor those receiving the early warnings were always adequately trained to make the best use of the system’s capabilities,” adds the insurer.

“Replacing pull messages with push alerts would ensure a robust chain of communication from authorities to local responders and the general public. Also, the communication gap between technical alerts issued by authorities and messages aimed at the public, which need to be easily understood by people of all ages, must be closed. In the event that mobile internet services break down, the use of ‘cell broadcasts’ – a well-established technology in many countries – is also recommended,” states the insurer.

Zurich says that describing such an event as unforeseeable or unprecedented does not help with the wider effort to mitigate such disasters.

“Many of those affected described the flood disaster as ‘unprecedented’ and ‘unforeseeable’. While this is understandable given the circumstances, it is also demonstrably incorrect. Records show that the Ahr Valley suffered a flood of similar magnitude back in 1804. Another flood in 1910 significantly exceeded current gauge records,” explained Michael Szönyi, head of Zurich’s Flood Resilience Program.

“Evidently, extreme weather events are forgotten only too quickly. This may be the reason why extensive flood resilience schemes from the 1920s were never implemented. Even when the Ahr Valley flooded again in 2016, there was talk of a once-in-a-century event, which the historical records show was far from true,” he added.

Zurich points out that today, less than a year after Bernd, demand for natural hazard insurance in Germany has already dropped back to pre-disaster levels.

“The ability to deal with natural hazards has declined among the population as a whole. Awareness that floods can and do happen, and of their potential severity, therefore needs to be embedded more strongly and permanently in people’s minds,” Szönyi said.

Szönyi went on to warn that “verbally dramatising an event as a singular disaster causes people to intuitively misjudge the probability of it occurring”.

“At the same time, public discussions often focus solely on climate change as the cause of these extreme weather events and their consequences. This unhelpfully narrows the public perspective to just one of the many factors which ultimately lead to these disasters. As a result, the focus shifts away from prevention,” he added.