title: From fatalism to resilience: reducing disaster impacts through systematic investments.
abstract: This paper describes a method for reducing the economic risks associated with predictable natural hazards by enhancing the resilience of national infrastructure systems. The three-step generalised framework is described along with examples. Step one establishes economic baseline growth without the disaster impact. Step two characterises economic growth constrained by a disaster. Step three assesses the economy's resilience to the disaster event when it is buffered by alternative resiliency investments. The successful outcome of step three is a disaster-resistant core of infrastructure systems and social capacity more able to maintain the national economy and development post disaster. In addition, the paper considers ways to achieve this goal in data-limited environments. The method provides a methodology to address this challenge via the integration of physical and social data of different spatial scales into macroeconomic models. This supports the disaster risk reduction objectives of governments, donor agencies, and the United Nations International Strategy for Disaster Reduction.
authors: Climate Decision Support and Adaptation Unit, National Agroclimate Information Service, Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada, Canada. hillh@agr.gc.ca
authors: Harvey
authors: H
authors: Hill
authors: John
authors: J
authors: Wiener
authors: Koko
authors: K
authors: Warner
mesh_terms: D004189:Disaster Planning / Q000379:methods / Q000458:organization & administration; D004190:Disasters / Q000191:economics*; D057217:Economic Development; D006801:Humans; D007449:Investments; D017059:Models, Econometric; D012308:Risk Management / Q000379:methods*