Improving resilience against tropical cyclones in Mozambique

The challenge: tropical cyclone impacts in Mozambique

The coastal areas of Mozambique are home to the majority of its economic activity. But they’re also extremely vulnerable to climate shocks including tropical cyclones. The damage of these events is often greatly amplified by the high poverty rate of Mozambique and the Government’s limited financial means to invest in climate resilience.

In fact, research by the World Bank shows that cyclones, floods, and droughts can reduce per capita food consumption by 25-30%, leading to unsustainable economic harm. In response, the World Bank needed a partner that could develop a solution to measure the impact of tropical cyclone impacts and thus improve the Government’s financial resilience against climate shocks.

The solution: developing a catastrophe risk model

The World Bank appointed CelsiusPro and sub-consultant Haskoning to develop a catastrophe risk model and parametric index for tropical cyclones.

CelsiusPro used the open-source quantitative modelling platform, CLIMADA, to build its catastrophe risk model, including a synthetic database based on 10,000 years of cyclone simulations.

Haskoning supported the project by researching and quantifying the economic impacts of tropical cyclones in Mozambique. We created national exposure datasets, including data on buildings, infrastructure, agriculture, livestock, and population density and we developed vulnerability relationships for flooding and extreme wind. Both exposure and vulnerability datasets were adopted in the catastrophe risk model. Financial calculations were done to validate this model against the reported damages from tropical cyclone Idai, which hit Mozambique in 2019.

The result: improving financial resilience to tropical cyclones

The catastrophe risk model and parametric index enable the Government of Mozambique to rapidly calculate the economic impact of tropical cyclone events. This will help inform the use of Mozambique’s Disaster Management Fund and the National Disaster Risk Finance Strategy – strengthening the nations’ economic resilience against tropical cyclones both now and in the future.