The world and our societies are facing growing risks from anthropogenic and natural hazards, which call for enhanced capacities in risk and resilience management and governance, including instruments for better prevention and preparedness, technologies for first responders, and where relevant for citizens, and overall societal resilience. The increasing severity and frequency of extreme weather events (e.g., floods, heat and cold waves, storms) and associated events (e.g., forest fires) resulting from climate change compounded vulnerabilities and exposure require a specific research focus while geological hazards (e.g., earthquakes, tsunamis, volcanic eruptions) and slow-onset trends (e.g., sea-level rise, glacier melt, droughts) also deserve continuous attention. Anthropogenic threats also demand strengthened crisis management capacities, as shown by recent industrial accidents and terrorist attacks associated with chemical, biological, radiological, nuclear, and explosive materials (CBRN-E). Finally, the COVID-19 crisis has demonstrated how societies have become more exposed and vulnerable to pandemic risks and has shown that existing global inequalities often exacerbate both the exposure and vulnerability of communities, infrastructures, and economies. Risk reduction of any kind of disaster is regulated by a number of international, EU and national and local policies and strategies covering various sectors and features such as awareness raising and communication, prevention, mitigation, preparedness, monitoring and detection, response, and recovery. Our societies nowadays have to deal with complex and transboundary crises within which a more systemic approach with strict interconnection between risk reduction and sustainable development is needed. Complex crises affect scientific, governance, policy and social areas and require inter-sectoral cooperation, and this includes the insurance sector.

Natural disasters (weather and climate-related extremes and geological events) in the EU have costed on average EUR 17 billion per year over the past ten years. Around 35% of the total losses from climate and extreme and weather events are insured today in the EU, although the proportion of the insured losses ranges from 1% in Romania and Lithuania to about 60% in Belgium. In the near-term future, the European insurance industry and their regulators have warned that affordability and insurability are likely to become an increasing concern with climate change. Insurance, in combination with other risk transfer and financing mechanisms, is an important tool to achieve disaster risk reduction targets. Insurance plays an important role in financially supporting the recovery of individuals, organizations, businesses, and communities affected by natural disasters. Large disaster losses in recent years have led insurance companies to re-examine their approach to increase the extent of insurance coverage and compensation for loss in vulnerable areas. This includes increasing their investment in assessing and modelling risk, developing advice on risk prevention and establishing new forms of coverage to support governments in managing the costs they face in post-disaster recovery. Questions remain about the limits of insurance in tackling fast-rising threats—not only how people at highest risk and with lower incomes can afford it, but whether insurance models can cope with much more frequent and destructive. Rethinking insurance pay-outs, giving homeowners clearer information on potential risks—using simple online tools, or providing data at the time of house purchases—may also be the way forward more resilient communities.

In this respect, research on improved disaster risk pricing assessment is essential, in particular, for investigating how to best enhance public accessibility of fiscal data and information related to disaster risks, as well as available risk transfer mechanisms such as insurance in an easily available and understandable way. Issues related to priorities and options in the insurance and reinsurance disaster management policies have been subject to the Workshop on Disaster Resilience and Insurance held on 7th November 2022 under the coordination of ETH Zurich in order to exchange ideas, experiences and stakeholders’ expectations related to new developments in the area of managing and pricing of disaster risks with a focus on emerging extreme disaster threats (XTs), insurance and its interactions with public sectors and other stakeholders, and the interconnectedness of critical infrastructures. Interconnections among different XTs (e.g., cyber, political or technology-originated threats), climate change-related or natural XTs may interfere with other processes (e.g., migration, globalization) and be amplified by human activity, potentially resulting in cascading effects. Solutions for increased resilience are hence needed at global level. The workshop gathered experts from different disciplines discussing a wide variety of facets related to resilience, decision support for extreme scenarios, along with solutions dealing with financial, economic and insurance aspects, standardization, education and development of new policies.

This special issue gathers main outputs of this workshop, covering a wide range of expert views on governance approaches for non-quantifiable risks, assessment of probabilities and impacts of extreme events for the needs of insurance under climate change, and priorities and strategy for insurance related to extreme threats. It discusses data, analyses, and risk forecasting of extreme threats, with an estimate of their impacts, and examines links among resilience assessment and insurance. Views are also expressed about how to align insurance and resilience-related practices and policies. Overall, the findings of the workshop and this special issue will represent a high added-value for better identifying research gaps and needs, and thus to anticipate future international cooperation in this area.