Does mitigation save? Reviewing cost-benefit analyses of disaster risk reduction

By C. Shreve, I. Kelman. 2014

265 citations recorded by the source corpus.

The benefit-cost-ratio (BCR), used in cost-benefit analysis (CBA), is an indicator that attempts to summarize the overall value for money of a project. Disaster costs continue to rise and the demand has increased to demonstrate the economic benefit of disaster risk reduction (DRR) to policy makers. This study compiles and compares original CBA case studies reporting DRR BCRs, without restrictions as to hazard type, location, scale, or other parameters. Many results were identified supporting the economic effectiveness of DRR, however, key limitations were identified, including a lack of: sensitivity analyses, meta-analyses which critique the literature, consideration of climate change, evaluation of the duration of benefits, broader consideration of the process of vulnerability, and potential disbenefits of DRR measures. The studies demonstrate the importance of context for each BCR result. Recommendations are made regarding minimum criteria to consider when conducting DRR CBAs.

Subfields: Atmospheric Science, Global and Planetary Change, Sociology and Political Science

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/87170a945f2c8ba5007498a8343b9effb44c9a86

How researchers see this paper

The researchers whose trusted networks rank it highest, strongest advocate first. Every researcher gets a different order.

In Atmospheric Science

1. Reinhard Mechler
2. Eric Tate

In Global and Planetary Change

1. Reinhard Mechler
2. Eric Tate
3. Bayes Ahmed
4. I. Kelman

In Sociology and Political Science

1. A. Strong
2. Haoyi Xiong
3. Travis Kraus
4. Reinhard Mechler
5. Eric Tate
6. I. Kelman

Citations in the corpus

• Reviewing estimates of the economic efficiency of disaster risk management: opportunities and limitations of using risk-based cost–benefit analysis (2016, background): “As a key gap, these reviews did not consider (Hawley et al. 2012; Shreve and Kelman 2014) or only give some credit (Moench et al. 2007) to the role of risk in CBAs.”
• Community Resilience to Cyclone Disasters in Coastal Bangladesh (2016, background): “Shreve and Kelman (2014) completed a meta-analysis of dozens of cost-benefit studies for DRR demonstrating how high the benefit-to-cost ratios can be for solid DRR interventions [55].”
• Flood recovery and property acquisition in Cedar Rapids, Iowa (2016, background): “This economic justification for HMGP project selection increasingly aligns with demands of policy makers and decision-makers (Shreve and Kelman 2014), adopting a utilitarian perspective to disaster recovery in which resource distribution should focus on maximizing public utility (Johnson et al.…”