3.5 SIMILARITY OF THREAT THE INSURED COMMUNITY MUST BE EXPOSED T...

2.3.5  Similarity  of  Threat  

The insured community must be exposed to the same level and type of threat, and the occurrence of the

expected event must give rise to the necessity for assigning funds in the same way to all those affected.

There are many variations of flood events, for example, storm surges, tsunami, flash flooding, and dike

breaches. All floods result in damage to property, often very considerable. While great efforts have been

made to invest in minimising the threat of flooding in many countries the risk can never be reduced to

zero, particularly for those communities living outside core flood defenses. This a is complicated

principle to apply at the national scale. It could be argued that the similarity of threat is not equal when

flood defenses have been built for the most economically important areas while less populated parts of

the country are left with less protection. Also, within defined flood risk communities, not the whole

population faces the same risk. For example, those who live in blocks of flats face negligible flood risk.

These kinds of factors lead to legitimacy questions in systems based on mandatory flood insurance.