A Global Comprehensive Measure of the Impact of Natural Hazards and Disasters
| Published date | 01 February 2016 |
| Date | 01 February 2016 |
| Author | Ilan Noy |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1111/1758-5899.12272 |
A Global Comprehensive Measure of the
Impact of Natural Hazards and Disasters
Ilan Noy
Victoria University of Wellington
Abstract
The adverse impacts of natural hazards are typically measured separately by the number of fatalities, of injuries, of people
otherwise affected, and the financial damage that they wreak. Without a comprehensive measure of disaster impacts it is
impossible to fully comprehend their importance and therefore successfully prepare for them. We propose an aggregate mea-
sure of disaster impact, which builds on the conceptual underpinnings of the calculations of Disability Adjusted Life Years
(DALYs) lost due to the burden of diseases and injuries (WHO, 2013). The proposed measure, however, adds a quantification
of the importance of destruction of infrastructure, capital and housing into an overall assessment. The index converts all mea-
sures of impact into ‘lifeyears’units. We then analyze worldwide trends in lifeyears lost to disasters and discuss policy implica-
tions of these measurements.
Policy Implications
•There is a need for better data collection on global risks associated with natural hazards. In particular, the paper highlights
that importance of identifying better the ways disasters affect people (through dispossessions, dislocations, health out-
comes, etc.).
•There is a need to find ways to aggregate and elaborate on this risk, and this article proposes one such method that is
people-centric.
•The burden of natural disaster impacts is distributed unevenly across space and across income levels, and that calls for an
increased international effort to re-allocate resources for disaster risk reduction.
•The previous international agreement on disaster risk reduction (DRR), the Hyogo Framework for Action, has not been suc-
cessful enough in reducing disaster risk. That places an additional burden on the recently agreed Sendai Framework for
DRR (signed 18 March 2015 in the UN World Conference in Japan).
1. Current practices in measuring disaster
impacts
The standard way in which disaster damages are measured
involves examining separately the number of fatalities, of
injuries, of people otherwise affected, and the financial dam-
age that disasters, triggered by natural hazards such as
earthquakes or floods, cause. When trying to evaluate the
global burden of disasters, the first difficulty is to aggregate
these separate measures into an aggregate index that can
improve our ability to compare and analyse trends in disas-
ter impacts.
EMDAT is currently the only publicly available disaster
impact data set with global coverage. This data has been col-
lected, for the past 25 years, by the Centre for Research on the
Epidemiology of Disasters, at the Universit
e catholique de Lou-
vain. EMDAT’s aim is to capture and register any disaster that
satisfies at least one of the following criteria: (1) ten or more
people are reported killed; (2) 100 people are reported
affected; (3) a state of emergency is declared; or (4) a call for
international assistance is issued. It is collected independently
from any government, from various sources, though it is partly
funded by USAID.
When examining the EMDAT data on disaster impacts –
measured separately by mortality, people affected and finan-
cial losses –it is easy to notice that there is a stark difference
between the trends indicated by each of these measures (Fig-
ure 1). This poses a problem for any attempt to characterize
trends in disaster impact, and maybe more importantly, to uti-
lize those trends to extrapolate into the future. There are many
reasons why we may be interested in understanding these
trends, one of which is the need to better understand the con-
nection between disaster losses and climatic change in order
to improve our ability to forecast future risk (e.g. IPCC, 2012).
Another reason that makes understanding trends in disaster
losses important is that the distribution of losses across coun-
tries at various levels of wealth and development is important
for international negotiations on updating climate policy. A
new climate/emissions agreement to replace the Kyoto Proto-
col will likely include large international transfers of resources
from the wealthiest industrialized countries to countries which
are now rapidly growing (or hope to grow). As such, a quantifi-
cation of the distribution of risk is an important factor in deter-
mining who should pay and who should get paid from these
funds. In addition, a careful cost-benefit analysis of various pre-
vention and mitigation policies, as outlined in the 2015 Sendai
©2015 University of Durham and John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. Global Policy (2016) 7:1 doi: 10.1111/1758-5899.12272
Global Policy Volume 7 . Issue 1 . February 2016
56
Research Article
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