David N. Bresch

Last Name

Bresch

First Name

David N.

ORCID

0000-0002-8431-4263

Organisational unit

09576 - Bresch, David Niklaus / Bresch, David Niklaus

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Publications 1 - 10 of 91

Practical Applications of Be Prepared: Exploring Future Climate-Related Risk for Residential and Commercial Real Estate Portfolios
Westcott, Mark; Ward, John; Surminski, Swenja; et al. (2020)
The Journal of Alternative Investments
Understanding the distributional effects of recurrent floods in the Philippines
Sauer, Inga; Walsh, Brian; Frieler, Katja; et al. (2025)
iScience
Successful recovery from extreme weather events is key to avoid long-term poverty implications. Yet, in disaster prone regions, there may not always be enough time to recover between events. There is a common narrative that the resulting incomplete recoveries aggravate adverse impacts, but approaches allowing for a systematic quantitative assessment are missing. Here, we extend an agent-based model to study welfare effects in the Philippines depending on household exposure and income. We find that incomplete recoveries increase cumulative consumption and well-being losses across the study period 2000–2018 by 40%. While low-income households suffer the highest well-being losses, the effect of incomplete recoveries is most relevant for middle-income households. Consequently, losses can be critically underestimated when drawing conclusions about the impacts of recurrent events based on the impacts of individual events. Accounting for incomplete recoveries may help to better prepare for an intensification of extreme events under climate change.
Applying big data beyond small problems in climate research
Knüsel, Benedikt; Zumwald, Marius; Baumberger, Christoph; et al. (2019)
Nature Climate Change
Commercial success of big data has led to speculation that big-data-like reasoning could partly replace theory-based approaches in science. Big data typically has been applied to ‘small problems’, which are well-structured cases characterized by repeated evaluation of predictions. Here, we show that in climate research, intermediate categories exist between classical domain science and big data, and that big-data elements have also been applied without the possibility of repeated evaluation. Big-data elements can be useful for climate research beyond small problems if combined with more traditional approaches based on domain-specific knowledge. The biggest potential for big-data elements, we argue, lies in socioeconomic climate research.
Modelling crop hail damage footprints with single-polarization radar: the roles of spatial resolution, hail intensity, and cropland density
Portmann, Raphael; Schmid, Timo; Villiger, Leonie; et al. (2024)
Natural Hazards and Earth System Sciences
Hail represents a major threat to agriculture in Switzerland, and assessments of current and future hail risk are of paramount importance for decision-making in the insurance industry and the agricultural sector. However, relating observational information on hail with crop-specific damage is challenging. Here, we build and systematically assess an open-source model to predict hail damage footprints for field crops (wheat, maize, barley, rapeseed) and grapevine from the operational radar product Maximum Expected Severe Hail Size (MESHS) at different spatial resolutions. To this end, we combine the radar information with detailed geospatial information on agricultural land use and geo-referenced damage data from a crop insurer for 12 recent hail events in Switzerland. We find that for field crops model skill gradually increases when the spatial resolution is reduced from 1 km down to 8 km. For even lower resolutions, the skill is diminished again. In contrast, for grapevine, decreasing model resolution below 1 km tends to reduce skill, which is attributed to the different spatial distribution of field crops and grapevine in the landscape. It is shown that identifying a suitable MESHS thresholds to model damage footprints always involves trade-offs. For the lowest possible MESHS threshold (20 mm) the model predicts damage about twice as often as observed (high frequency bias and false alarm ratio), but it also has a high probability of detection (80 %). The frequency bias decreases for larger thresholds and reaches an optimal value close to 1 for MESHS thresholds of 30–40 mm. However, this comes at the cost of a substantially lower probability of detection (around 50 %), while overall model skill, as measured by the Heidke skill score (HSS), remains largely unchanged (0.41–0.44). We argue that, ultimately, the best threshold therefore depends on the relative costs of a false alarm versus a missed event. Finally, the frequency of false alarms is substantially reduced and skill is improved (HSS = 0.54) when only areas with high cropland density are considered. Results from this simple, open-source model show that modelling of hail damage footprints to crops from single-polarization radar in Switzerland is skilful and is best done at 8 km resolution for field crops and 1 km for grapevine.
Who is ‘the user’ of climate services? Unpacking the use of national climate scenarios in Switzerland beyond sectors, numeracy and the research–practice binary
Skelton, Maurice; Fischer, Andreas M.; Liniger, Mark A.; et al. (2019)
Climate Services
By whom are national climate scenarios taken up, and which products are used? Despite numerous (national) climate scenarios being published by countries across the globe, studies of their actual uptake and application remain low. Analysing a survey and group interviews on the ways the Swiss climate scenarios CH2011 have been actually used by the Swiss adaptation community, we encoded the emerging differences in a new typology of observers, sailors, and divers. Taking an iceberg as a metaphor for climate scenarios, most respondents were sailors, accessing only key findings above the waterline (i.e., summary brochures). However, the vast majority of climate scenario data remains below the surface (i.e., downscaled climate model data), accessible only to the quarter of respondents labelled divers. Lastly, another quarter are observers, interested in the iceberg from afar, but without applying the climate information directly to their work. By describing three ways of using climate scenarios, we aim to clarify the often vague notion of ‘user’ circulating prominently in discussions around climate services and knowledge co-production. In addition, our results question the adequacy of simplifying climate scenario use by a user’s easily observable characteristics – such as being a researcher or practitioner, by sector or by numeracy. Our typology thus highlights the diversity of use(r)s within sectors or academia, but is also able to characterise various similarities of use(r)s between sectors, researchers and practitioners. Our findings assist in more nuanced and informed discussions of how ‘users’ are imagined and characterised in future developments of usable climate services.
A framework for building climate storylines based on downward counterfactuals: The case of the European Union Solidarity fund
Ciullo, Alessio; Martius, Olivia; Strobl, Eric; et al. (2021)
Climate Risk Management
Recent research introduced the concept of climate storylines as an alternative approach to estimate climate impact and better deal with uncertainties. A climate storyline is an event-based approach which aims at building “physically self-consistent unfolding of past events, or of plausible future events or pathways”. As such, climate storylines may profit from downward counterfactual thinking, which aims at analyzing how past events could have been worse. Notwithstanding the various applications of downward counterfactual thinking in the natural risk management literature, no study relates this with the climate storyline approach. The main goal of this paper is thus to introduce a framework that supports the development of climate storylines from downward counterfactuals. The framework is event-oriented, it focuses on impact, and it is designed to be applied in a participatory fashion. As a proof-of-concept application, we study the impact of tropical cyclone events on the European Union Solidarity Fund (EUSF) and do not conduct a participatory analysis. These events represent a serious threat to the European outermost regions, and their impact to the EUSF capital availability has never been studied. We find that payouts due to tropical cyclones can hamper a recovery of the fund if large payouts concurrently occur in mainland Europe. To avoid this also considering future changes, an increase in capitalization up to 90 % percent may be required.
Economics of Adaptation (ECA) in Development Cooperation: A Climate Risk Assessment Approach
Wieneke, Florian; Bresch, David N. (2016)
Materials on Development Financing
Already today, extreme weather events present a significant risk to ecosystems, societies and their economies. Climate variability and change have the potential to aggravate these risks becoming one of the most serious threats to the development prospects in many countries around the globe. The approach taken under the umbrella of “Economics of Climate Adaptation (ECA-approach)” provides decision-makers with information about potential climate-related damage to their economies and societies. It can foster comprehensive adaptation strategies by analysing and proposing a variety of specific adaptation measures in a systematic way. Well-targeted, early investments to improve climate resilience are likely to be less cost-intensive and more effective than complex post-disaster relief efforts, both locally and on an aggregated global scale. The ECA approach has been introduced by KfW Development Bank to development cooperation as an innovative way to identify and prioritize adaptation measures within comprehensive adaptation programmes on the local or regional scale, ensuring an active involvement of a broad range of stakeholders
Joint knowledge production in climate change adaptation networks
Muccione, Veruska; Huggel, Christian; Bresch, David N.; et al. (2019)
Current Opinion in Environmental Sustainability
Future climate risk from compound events
Zscheischler, Jakob; Westra, Seth; van den Hurk, B.J.J.M.; et al. (2018)
Nature Climate Change
Instrumente für eine wirksame und effiziente Klima- und Energiepolitik
Banfi Frost, Silvia; Betz, Regina; Bresch, David N.; et al. (2019)
Swiss Academies Factsheets
Derzeit werden im politischen Prozess der Schweiz die Weichen für die zukünftige Klima- und Energiepolitik gestellt. Die Schweiz will aus der Kernenergie aussteigen und gleichzeitig die Treibhausgasemissionen mindern. Dazu braucht es eine koordinierte und breit abgestützte Klima- und Energiepolitik mit einem wirksamen und effizienten Mix aus politischen Instrumenten wie beispielsweise Lenkungsabgaben oder Emissionsgrenzwerten. Dieses Faktenblatt bietet eine Übersicht über die verschiedenen Instrumente und zeigt auf, für welchen Zweck sie sich am besten eignen, welche Wirkung sie erzielen können und welche Vor- und Nachteile sie haben.

Publications 1 - 10 of 91

David N. Bresch

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