Strengthening disaster resilience for society

Urbanisation, economic development, growing asset concentrations in exposed areas and climate change are leading to increased natural catastrophe losses. That's because we live, build and work in locations most at risk from floods, storms, wildfires and extreme weather events. Worldwide, over 76,500 people are believed to have died or gone missing in disaster events in 2023. According to the Swiss Re Institute, natural catastrophes claimed over 72,900 of those victims, and human-made disasters over 3,600.

Throughout history humankind is often ill prepared to effectively manage the consequences of large-scale disasters. Enormous sums of money are spent on recovering from the aftermath of a shock event rather than spending on reducing risk and better preventing devastating impacts on all of us, on our people, assets and our economies – before such an event happens.  The Swiss Re Public Sector Solutions Team partners with government and other public entities to help the move from a dependency on post-event measures, to one of more active risk management.

We support various types of entities active in the public sector. As diverse as our partners are, so are the ways we can help them manage different natural catastrophe and human-made related risks – including perils such as earthquakes, windstorms, excess rain, floods or drought – and thereby support their resilience strategies. Combining risk prevention, risk mitigation and risk transfer measures forms part of a comprehensive disaster resilience strategy.

We can contribute to the management of disaster risks and support our public sector partners by absorbing economic losses using various forms of risk transfer and through the provision of actionable risk insights. We can tailor these supporting actions to the resilience strategies and specific challenges they face. Discover some of our propositions below.