Economics of Hazards & Disasters
Lorraine Motola, Emergency & Disaster Management
Metropolitan College of New York
This course, Economics of Hazards and Disasters, provides a comprehensive overview of the economic aspects of hazards and disasters through a review of the concepts, analytical tools and policies to aid emergency managers, before, during and after emergencies. Each student selects a hazard from from the Sub-committee on Disaster Reduction (SDR), and a related disaster, without a published damage assessment, then use Gross Domestic Product (GDP) data for the year prior to the disaster, year of and two subsequent years, to serve as a framework in writing their paper on the Economic Effects of the chosen disaster.
University with graduate programs, primarily masters programs
This is an introductory graduate-level course with no pre-requisites. It serves as a required course for students in the Disaster & Emergency Management, graduate program. Typically all of the students are enrolled in this major. The students favor the course approach of writing weekly components that serve as appendices to a report written at the end.
Each week a lecture and activity occur on the following topics:
- Direct & Indirect Damage/Losses
- Critical Infrastructure & Key Resources
- Early Warning Systems
- Insurance, Disaster Relief or CAT Bonds
- Emergency Management Policies
- Economic & Community Impact
To have an understanding of hazards in relation to disasters and the importance of sustainable mitigation. The ability to analyze a disaster including the social, economic, and environmental impacts. Determine associated gaps and provide recommendations.
Each student must write about the Economic Effects of their chosen disaster. Weekly assignments relate to the class lecture and the write-up serves as an appendix to the final report or paper.
The course design provides a Real World Experience and is fast paced. During activation it is not unusual that documents have to be written quickly and posted electronically. Similarly when on a Planning Team members may write only portions of the document and may need to use a template format. This course follows methods that give a Real World feel.
Primarily the assessment takes place by evaluating the weekly assignments, which determine if the weekly topic should be revisited.
References and Notes:
- Natural Hazards Analysis Reducing the Impact of Disasters by John C. Pine
- Natural Hazards UnNatural Disasters The Economics of Effective Prevention, The World Bank
- Handbook for Estimating the Socio-economic and Environmental Effects of Disasters, Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC)
- Read more about using the Newtown Creek Superfund Site, Greenpoint, Brooklyn, New York as a teaching example