2008 Joint Meeting of The Geological Society of America, Soil Science Society of America, American Society of Agronomy, Crop Science Society of America, Gulf Coast Association of Geological Societies with the Gulf Coast Section of SEPM

Paper No. 13
Presentation Time: 4:50 PM

Management of the Risk Due to Natural and Technological Disasters through Private Insurance Companies In Romania


MARA, Septimus, Directorate for Prevention and Management of Emergency Situations, Ministry of Environment and Sustainable Development, Bld. Libertatii no. 12, sect. 5, Bucharest, Romania, Bucharest, 040129, Romania, maraseptimius@yahoo.com

Generally, any damage assessment is made in order to ensure the compensation to the affected persons. It has to be specified that the insurance companies have so far a weak involvement in the activities for preventing and reducing the effects produced by the natural and technological hazards in Romania. The only financial resources for minimising the damages caused by the natural disasters are the funds allocated by the State budget and external credits. Generally the damages produced by the natural disaster cannot be integrally covered by the state funds, so a better involvement of the insurance companies will lead to solving the problem of indemnity for affected people by disasters. To be encouraged to extend their activity to the insurance at disasters, the specialised companies should be able to estimate their insurance primes depending on the estimated risk for every property and facility. The GIS maps based on the multiple disaster risk evaluation methodology should provide this information. The priorities targeted by the paper, once applied through dissemination to the interested factors are the following: a). Extending the interest of private companies for natural and technological disasters at the county level; b). Encouraging juridical and physical persons potentially affected by disasters to use private insurance companies services; c). Vulnerability and Risk methodology implementation for hazard mapping in Romania, using GIS at the level of the county public administration (County Council)