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## 2 INTERPRETING THE EVENT LOSS TABLE 

We use a rather general form for the Event Loss Table (ELT), given in Table I. In this form, the losses from an identified event i are themselves uncertain, and described by a probability density function f$_{i}$ . That is to say, if X$_{i}$ is the loss from a single occurrence of event i , then 

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for any well-behaved A ⊂$_{R}$ . The special case where the loss for an occur- rence of event i is treated as a constant x$_{i}$ is represented with the Dirac delta function f$_{i}$ ( x ) = δ ( x − x$_{i}$ ). 

The choice of f$_{i}$ for each event represents represents uncertainty about the loss that follows from the event, often termed ‘secondary uncertainty’ in catastrophe modelling. We will discuss an efficient and flexible approach to representing more-or-less arbitrary specifications of f$_{i}$ in Section 5. 

There are two equivalent representations of the ELT, for stochastic sim- ulation of the loss process through time (see, e.g., Ross, 1996, sec. 1.5). The 

