Brokers may want to take their homeowner clients on a walking tour of this Burlington, Ont. home that has been retrofitted to mitigate basement flooding.
The Beechwood Crescent home was retrofitted by the Institute for Catastrophic Loss Reduction (ICLR) as part of the insurance industry’s ongoing commitment to educate Canadian homeowners about disaster safety.
“The ICLR has chosen a community recently affected by a significant rainfall event which left thousands of homes with basement flooding,” says Glenn McGillivray, the managing director of the ICLR,” in order to demonstrate the important role homeowners can and should play in urban/basement flood mitigation.”
The benefits of flood mitigation are proven. A recent Suncorp analysis, Economic benefits of flood mitigation investments by services firm Urbis, shows that two flood mitigation projects in Queensland, Australia will bring economic benefits at least five times more than their cost.
Specifically, the capital and running costs of $5.9 million, St George’s flood mitigation project will deliver protective benefits totalling $31.6 million over the next 50 years for a benefit cost ratio of 5.4. Roma’s project cost is $16.4 million, delivering protective benefits totalling $81.1 million over the next 50 years for a benefit cost ratio of 4.9.
Peter Hoppe, head of Geo Risk Research/Corporate Climate Centre for
Munich Re, cites recent studies by a colleague of his who has examined the potential savings through simple mitigation efforts that can be done now – and offers lessons that can be learned from Europe for those who felt the brunt of last year’s flooding in southern Alberta. (continued.)
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“We have already started flood mitigation in Hamburg, Germany,” says Hoppe. “There was a big storm surge in 1962, killing hundreds of people and creating 1 billion euro loss. Since then, 2 billion euros have been invested in the city, and nine times the river level has been higher than 1962; and nothing in terms of losses have happened since then. It is estimated that we have saved more than $20 billion in potential losses.”
Several representatives from ICLR were on hand Wednesday to conduct tours of the house and answer technical questions relating to urban flooding, basement flood mitigation and the retrofit.
Established in 1998 by Canada's property and casualty insurers, ICLR is an independent, not-for-profit research institute based in Toronto and at the University of Western Ontario in London, Canada.
