Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to understand how built environment professionals approach the valuation of flood risk in commercial property markets and whether insurance promotes mitigation in different insurance and risk management regimes, draw common conclusions and highlight opportunities to transfer learning.
Design/methodology/approach
An illustrative case study approach involving literature search and 72 interviews with built environment professionals, across five countries in four continents.
Findings
Common difficulties arise in availability, reliability and interpretation of risk information, and in evaluating the impact of mitigation. These factors, coupled with the heterogeneous nature of commercial property, lack of transactional data and remote investors, make valuation of risk particularly challenging in the sector. Insurance incentives for risk mitigation are somewhat effective where employed and could be further developed, however, the influence of insurance is hampered by lack of insurance penetration and underinsurance.
Research limitations/implications
Further investigation of the means to improve uptake of insurance and to develop insurance incentives for mitigation is recommended.
Practical implications
Flood risk is inconsistently reflected in commercial property values leading to lack of mitigation and vulnerability of investments to future flooding. Improvements are needed in: access to adequate risk information; professional skills in valuing risk; guidance on valuation of flood risk; and regulation to ensure adequate consideration of risk and mitigation options.
Originality/value
The research addresses a global issue that threatens local, and regional economies through loss of utility, business profitability and commercial property value. It is unique in consulting professionals across international markets.
Despite the increasing impacts of recurrent flooding, there is dearth of research involving businesses preparedness and recovery. This research therefore focused on investigating the patterns of preparedness and trends in recovery among business properties. A review of literature was performed primarily to recognize the gaps requiring investigation followed by identification of two case studies (Wakefield and Sheffield in the UK) for empirical data collection. The survey enquired about the level of preparedness among a sample of the flood-affected business community using a self-administered questionnaire. Questions addressed the type of mitigation and preparedness activities and measures that they engaged in and adopted for recovery along with factors like time cost of recovery and sources of finances. Results from the survey suggest that business interruption was highly influential in terms of differential cost and time of recovery. It was not the direct impact of flooding rather the under-researched and lesser-perceived business interruption through indirect factors that were more significant for cost and time of recovery. Furthermore, evidence of businesses relying highly on selffinance was also apparent from the survey. Knowledge gained from the survey for preparedness measures indicated that out of flood-affected samples that flood experience is an important indicator of preparedness and mitigation actions. The outcome of the research has highlighted some of the least researched phenomena in the flood-affected business property sector and can demonstrate the need for more widespread efforts to improve disaster recovery among businesses and a novel input for future research.
The city of São Carlos, state of São Paulo, Brazil, has a historical coexistence between society and floods. Unplanned urbanization in this area is a representative feature of how Brazilian cities have developed, undermining the impact of natural hazards. The Gregório Creek catchment is an enigma of complex dynamics concerning the relationship between humans and water in Brazilian cities. Our hypothesis is that social memory of floods can improve future resilience.In this paper we analyse flood risk dynamics in a small urban catchment, identify the impacts of social memory on building resilience and propose measures to reduce the risk of floods. We applied a socio-hydrological model using data collected from newspapers from 1940 to 2018. The model was able to elucidate human-water processes in the catchment and the historical source data proved to be a useful tool to fill gaps in the data in small urban basins.
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