Topic
Natural disaster
About: Natural disaster is a research topic. Over the lifetime, 5456 publications have been published within this topic receiving 104808 citations. The topic is also known as: natural calamity & natural hazard.
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TL;DR: The authors examined the learning process that economic agents use to update their expectation of an uncertain and infrequently observed event and found that insurance take-up is most consistent with a Bayesian learning model that allows for forgetting or incomplete information about past floods.
Abstract: I examine the learning process that economic agents use to update their expectation of an uncertain and infrequently observed event. I use a new nation-wide panel dataset of large regional floods and flood insurance policies to show that insurance take-up spikes the year after a flood and then steadily declines to baseline. Residents in nonflooded communities in the same television media market increase take-up at one-third the rate of flooded communities. I find that insurance take-up is most consistent with a Bayesian learning model that allows for forgetting or incomplete information about past floods. (JEL D12, D83, D84, G22, Q54)
318 citations
TL;DR: Public health consequences associated with tropical cyclones include storm-related mortality, injury, infectious disease, psychosocial effects, displacement and homelessness, damage to the health-care infrastructure, disruption of public health services, transformation of ecosystems, social dislocation, loss of jobs and livelihood, and economic crisis.
Abstract: Tropical cyclones—variously defined as hurricanes, typhoons, and cyclones—regularly impact human populations and periodically produce devastating weather-related natural disasters. The epidemiology of tropical cyclones is fundamentally determined by the physical forces of massive cyclonic systems intersecting with patterns of human behavior. The destructive forces of cyclonic winds, inundating rains, and storm surge are frequently accompanied by floods, tornadoes, and landslides (1, 2). Human factors include land use and settlement patterns, building design and construction, forecasting and warning systems, risk perception, evacuation, and sheltering. Preparedness and mitigation strategies for minimizing harm include family disaster planning, stocking of hurricane supplies, protection of home sites, timely response to public warnings, and alertness to poststorm hazards.
Public health consequences associated with tropical cyclones include storm-related mortality, injury, infectious disease, psychosocial effects, displacement and homelessness, damage to the health-care infrastructure, disruption of public health services, transformation of ecosystems, social dislocation, loss of jobs and livelihood, and economic crisis. These outcomes disproportionately befall developing nations, and human factors strongly influence the observed disparities (3).
314 citations
TL;DR: The role of public health in reducing human vulnerability to climate change within the context of select examples for emergency preparedness and response is discussed in this paper, where public health agencies are uniquely placed to build human resilience to climate-related disasters.
312 citations
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TL;DR: The authors examined the impact of hurricane exposure on resource flows to developing countries using meteorological data on storm paths and constructed a time-varying storm index that takes into account the fraction of a country's population exposed to storms of varying intensities.
Abstract: How well do countries cope with the aftermath of natural disasters? In particular, do international financial flows help buffer countries in the wake of disasters? This paper focuses on hurricanes (one of the most common and destructive types of disasters), and examines the impact of hurricane exposure on resource flows to developing countries. Using meteorological data on storm paths, I construct a time-varying storm index that takes into account the fraction of a country's population exposed to storms of varying intensities. Across developing countries, greater hurricane exposure leads to large increases in foreign aid. For other types of international financial flows, the impact of hurricanes varies according to income level. In the poorer half of the sample, hurricane exposure leads to substantial increases in migrants' remittances, so that total inflows from all sources in the three years following hurricane exposure amount to roughly three-fourths of estimated damages. In the richer half of the sample, by contrast, hurricane exposure stimulates inflows of new lending from multilateral institutions, but offsetting declines in private financial flows are so large that the null hypothesis of zero damage replacement cannot be rejected.
309 citations
27 Aug 2003
TL;DR: Bankoff as mentioned in this paper traces the history of natural hazards in the Philippines from the records kept by the Spanish colonisers to the 'Calamitous Nineties', and assesses the effectiveness of the relief mechanisms that have evolved to cope with these occurrences.
Abstract: In this fascinating and comprehensive study, Greg Bankoff traces the history of natural hazards in the Philippines from the records kept by the Spanish colonisers to the 'Calamitous Nineties', and assesses the effectiveness of the relief mechanisms that have evolved to cope with these occurrences. He also examines the correlation between this history of natural disasters and the social hierarchy within Filipino society. The constant threat of disaster has been integrated into the schema of daily life to such an extent that a 'culture of disaster' has been formed.
305 citations