Physical Climate Risk and Foreign Direct Investment: Is China Different?

This study deploys newly available data to examine the exposure of multinational companies’ overseas investments to physical climate risk. Globally, we find that foreign investment in the agriculture and mining sectors is most associated with physical risk. We also examine China, as it is fast becoming one of the largest centers of both inward and outward foreign investment across the globe. We find that foreign facilities located in China are associated with higher hurricanes and typhoon risk than their domestic counterparts in China. For Chinese firms operating abroad, we find that China’s overseas facilities are associated with higher water stress, floods, and hurricanes & typhoon risks across host countries, compared with non-Chinese companies. Within host countries, however, climate risks of Chinese facilities are comparable to that of non-Chinese facilities.

Influence of Environmental Values on the Typhoon Risk Perceptions of High School Students: A Case Study in Ningbo, China

Typhoons are a severe form of natural disaster that can impose huge economic losses and casualties on society. High school students are more vulnerable compared with adults during typhoons. Improving risk perceptions of typhoons can help high school students to effectively respond to typhoons and reduce related losses. Environmental values play an important role in human perceptions and actions. Although typhoons are caused by environmental factors, few studies have investigated the influence of environmental factors on typhoon risk perceptions of high school students. This study investigates the typhoon risk perceptions of high school students in Ningbo, China, and further analyzes the influence of environmental values on these perceptions with the structural equations model. The results reveal that environmental values have significantly positive impacts on typhoon risk perceptions. The findings also demonstrate that disaster threats and the disaster management ability of the government have significant positive impacts on typhoon risk perceptions. This study proposes suggestions and measures to improve typhoon risk perceptions among high school students and provides a reference for typhoon prevention and reduction education in China.

Typhoon Vulnerability Analysis in South Korea Utilizing Damage Record of Typhoon Maemi

The purpose of this research is to identify the indicators of typhoon damage and develop a metric for typhoon vulnerability functions employing the losses associated with Typhoon Maemi. Typhoons cause significant financial damages worldwide every year. Federal and local governments, insurance companies, and construction companies strive to develop typhoon risk assessment models and use them to quantify the risks so that they can avoid, mitigate, or transfer the financial risks. Therefore, typhoon risk assessment modeling is becoming increasingly important, and in order to achieve a sophisticated evaluation, it is also important to reflect more specified and local vulnerabilities. Although several previous studies on economic loss associated with natural catastrophe have identified essential risk indicators, there has been a shortage of more specific research studies focusing on the correlation between vulnerability and economic loss caused by typhoons. In order to fill this gap, this study collected and analyzed the actual loss record of Typhoon Maemi collected and accumulated by a major insurance company in Korea. In order to create the vulnerability functions and to identify the natural hazard indicators and basic building information indicators, information from the insurance record was used in the analysis. The results and metric of this research provide a pragmatic approach that helps create vulnerability functions for abovementioned sectors and like estimating local vulnerabilities and predicting and coping with the possible damage and loss from typhoons.

Cost of Climate Change: Risk of Building Loss from Typhoon in South Korea

In recent years, natural disasters and climate abnormalities have increased worldwide. The Fifth Assessment Report (2014) of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change warned of extreme rainfall events, warming and acidification, global mean temperature rises, and average sea level rises. In many countries, changes in weather disaster patterns, such as typhoons and heavy rains, have already led to increased damage to buildings. However, the empirical quantification of typhoon risk and building damage due to climate change is insufficient. The purpose of this study was to quantify the risk of building loss from typhoon pattern change caused by climate change. To this end, the intensity and frequency of typhoons affecting Korea were analyzed to examine typhoon patterns. In addition, typhoon risk was quantified using the Korean typhoon vulnerability function utilized by insurers, reinsurers, and vendors, the major users of catastrophe modeling. Hence, through this study, it is possible to generate various risk management strategies, which can be used by governments when establishing climate change policies and help insurers to improve their business models through climate risk assessment based on reasonable quantitative typhoon damage scenarios.