By using our risk expertise as a global insurer, Zurich helps customers and communities to reduce the devastating impacts of floods, even before a flood hits – we call this flood resilience. Floods affect more people globally than any other type of natural hazard and cause some of the largest economic, social and humanitarian losses. Loss of life and economic and insured losses are increasing in many regions, and flood risks are more interconnected and interdependent than ever.
Pre-event risk reduction is the focus of our efforts across the Zurich flood resilience program. We know that prevention is cost-effective, but nearly 87 percent of disaster-related spending on aid goes into emergency response, reconstruction and rehabilitation, and only 13 percent toward reducing and managing the risks before they became disasters. But flood resilience cannot be enhanced by one stakeholder alone, that is why we have created a multi-organizational partnership to enhance societal flood resilience in 2013. We call this the Zurich flood resilience alliance (‘the Alliance’).
5 years later, more than 110 communities in 9 countries have benefited from Alliance projects. In the Flood Resilience phase 1 report we provide a short overview of the input, output and achievements (‘impacts’) of the Zurich flood resilience program, including the Zurich flood resilience alliance. The impact of the program over the past 5 years encourages us to move forward with the Alliance 2.0 until 2023.
