Search results

Economic modeling issues for measuring damages and losses from disasters and their impacts are complex. The questions surrounding the potential economic effects of a disaster have been studied and discussed in various aspects. Input‐output analysis has been employed in many studies to measure and evaluate the economic impacts of disasters, mainly because of the ability to reflect the structure of regional economy in great detail. Whereas they provide useful information regarding the economic impacts and consequences and about the resource allocation strategies to minimize the losses and impacts, many of these studies have failed to investigate the dynamic nature of impact path over space and time, due to the difficulties to obtain such data and also to the static nature of input‐output framework. In order to analyze the spatial impacts of a disaster, Miyazawa's extension to the conventional input‐output framework is employed and is applied for the case of the Great Hanshin Earthquake.

Tsunamis, droughts, earthquakes, hurricanes and floods are a constant threat to society. Where in the past the population at risk had to react on the consequences of disasters, at present society wants to be more in control. Due to the high costs of restoration, of the stress and of the loss of family and friends, a proactive policy in order to prevent disasters or at least to minimize the impact is required. Such a policy asks for a framework to decide on the risk society wants to take. Moreover, it is mandatory to agree on the way instruments preventing disasters are evaluated on their effectiveness. This special issue accounts for the contributions on the methodology of damage estimation by leading European and American economists. Introduces the subject and presents an overview of all papers.