ABSTRACT
The increase in natural disaster losses from floods, storms, droughts, and other climate-related hazards, both in developed and developing countries, over the past decades has only been recently analysed in the context of longer run economic development (Gurenko 2004; Hochrainer and Mechler 2009). While the increase as of today may be explained largely by socio-economic factors such as increases of wealth and exposure (Munich Re 2009), there is mounting evidence of a climate-change signal in hazard intensity and frequency too (Schönwiese et al. 2003; Emanuel 2005; Parry et al. 2007).
