About Enhance Project
An editorial reference on how the cost of floods, storms, droughts and other natural disasters is shared across Europe.
Enhance Project explains who pays when a natural disaster strikes in Europe, and how. Every country answers that question differently. In Spain a public insurer covers extraordinary risks for anyone holding a property policy. In France a surcharge on every home policy funds a state-backed reinsurer. In the United Kingdom a reinsurance scheme keeps flood cover affordable for older homes until 2039, and in Germany most homeowners still have to choose natural hazard cover separately and many do not.
The site sets these arrangements side by side, follows major events from the first damage estimates to the final payouts, and tracks the gap between economic losses and insured losses that governments and households end up carrying themselves.
What the site covers
- National catastrophe-insurance schemes, one page per scheme and a side-by-side comparison.
- A case-study atlas of European disasters, from the 2010 Eyjafjallajökull ash cloud to the Valencia floods of 2024.
- Data on the insurance protection gap, with sources for every figure.
- Explainers on parametric insurance, the EU Solidarity Fund and flood risk in the UK.
- A glossary of the terms used in disaster risk management, and a document library of research reports and policy briefs.
The ENHANCE project
Many of the case studies and reports collected here come from ENHANCE, a research project on risk management partnerships for catastrophic natural disasters that ran under the EU's Seventh Framework Programme from 2012 to 2016. Each report is credited to its authors, and the project's findings are summarised with references to the original documents.
Who the site is for
The readers in mind are people who have to understand the money side of disasters without being specialists in it: students and researchers following a citation, journalists checking how a national scheme works, homeowners comparing what their own policy would and would not pay, and officials looking at how a neighbouring country solved a problem. For that reason each page starts with the plain answer, then gives the detail, then the sources.
The site does not sell insurance, does not recommend a provider and does not take payment for coverage. It explains how schemes are built and what the published figures say; it does not give personal financial advice.
How pages are written
Figures come from primary sources wherever possible: the schemes' own annual reports, legislation, the European Insurance and Occupational Pensions Authority (EIOPA), the European Environment Agency (EEA) and peer-reviewed research. Each page lists its sources at the end, with the date the source gives. Estimates are labelled as estimates, and when two sources disagree both are shown.
Corrections are welcome. Write to [email protected] with the page address and the source for the correction.
Editors
- Hannah Ellery, risk transfer and insurance. Writes on catastrophe insurance, reinsurance and the public schemes that sit behind household cover.
- Tomás Ribera, floods and case studies. Covers flood events, recovery after disasters and what individual cases show about shared risk.
- Mirjam de Vos, eu policy and solidarity. Follows the EU Solidarity Fund, civil protection and how governments divide disaster costs.