Measuring Business Losses from Flooding.
Abstract
Flooding and other natural disasters destroy and damage capital and interrupt the production and income generating process. Accordingly, losses from flooding may include reduced national wealth and income over a given interval of time. This report focuses primarily upon developing a methodology for assessing and measuring the economic losses of production of goods and services as a result of flooding. The methodology for measuring the direct losses from flooding, the physical damage to property, is well established, hence will not be dealt with except in the general scheme of evaluating losses due to flooding. The losses from flooding are measured using national income and wealth accounting concepts. The methodology is developed for application at the level of the individual firm and area economy. The procedures outlined provide a set of guidelines which an informed analyst can use to make estimates of the direct business losses, and thus make inferences of the employment and income impact on the local economy. The general outlines of this report is as follows. Section 2 reviews literature relevant to measuring economic loss from natural disasters. Section 3 deals with the measurement of business losses at the firm level. Section 4 develops the survey and procedure for estimating business loss. Section 5 presents the methodology for estimating the income and employment effect on the local economy. (Author)
Document Details
- Document Type
- Technical Report
- Publication Date
- Jun 01, 1985
- Accession Number
- ADA160257
Entities
People
- J. R. Barnard
Organizations
- University of Iowa