Acceptable losses? The relative impacts of natural hazards in the United States, 1980-2009

International Journal of Disaster Risk Reduction

Volumn 5, Issue , 2013, Pages 61-72

  Ash, Kevin D ^a   Cutter, Susan L ^a   Emrich, Christopher T ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF SOUTH CAROLINA   (United States)

Author keywords

Disaster losses; Relative loss ratio; US

Indexed keywords

EID: 84887538938     PISSN: 22124209     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1016/j.ijdrr.2013.08.001     Document Type: Article

References (57)

1. Birkmann J. Risk and vulnerability indicators at different scales: Applicability, usefulness and policy implications. Environmental Hazards 2007, 7:20-31.
2. Hallegatte S., Corfee-Morlot J. Understanding climate change impacts, vulnerability and adaptation at city scale: an introduction. Climatic Change 2011, 104:1-12.
3. Berke P., Smith G., Lyles W. Planning for resiliency: evaluation of state hazard mitigation plans under the Disaster Mitigation Act. Natural Hazards Review 2012, 13:139-149.
4. Neumayer E., Barthel F. Normalizing economic loss from natural disasters: a global analysis. Global Environmental Change 2011, 21:13-24.
5. Cross J.A. Megacities and small towns: different perspectives on hazard vulnerability. Global Environmental Change Part B: Environmental Hazards 2001, 3:63-80.
6. Marulanda M.C., Cardona O.D., Barbat A.H. Revealing the socioeconomic impact of small disasters in Colombia using the DesInventar database. Disasters 2010, 34:552-570.
7. Cutter S.L., Emrich C. Are natural hazards and disaster losses in the US increasing?. EOS Transactions 2005, 381:388-389.
8. Barthel F., Neumayer E. A trend analysis of normalized insured damage from natural disasters. Climatic Change 2012, 113:215-237.
9. Gall M., Borden K.A., Emrich C.T., Cutter S.L. The unsustainable trend of natural hazard losses in the United States. Sustainability 2011, 3:2157-2181.
10. Bouwer L.M. Have disaster losses increased due to anthropogenic climate change?. Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society 2011, 92:39-46.
11. Changnon S.A., Pielke R.A., Changnon D., Sylves R.T., Pulwarty R. Human factors explain the increased losses from weather and climate extremes. Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society 2000, 81:437-442.
12. Brooks H.E., Doswell C.A. Normalized damage from major tornadoes in the United States: 1890-1999. Weather and Forecasting 2001, 16:168-176.
13. Downton M., Miller J.Z.B., Pielke R.A. Reanalysis of US national weather service flood loss database. Natural Hazards Review 2005, 6:13-22.
14. Pielke R.A., Gratz J., Landsea C.W., Collins D., Saunders M.A., Musulin R. Normalized hurricane damage in the United States: 1900-2005. Natural Hazards Review 2008, 9:29-42.
15. Vranes K., Pielke R.A. Normalized earthquake damage and fatalities in the United States: 1900-2005. Natural Hazards Review 2009, 10:84-101.
16. Rose A. Economic principles, issues, and research priorities in hazard loss estimation. Modeling spatial and economic impacts of disasters 2004, 13-36. Springer-Verlag, New York. Y. Okuyama, S.E. Chang (Eds.).
17. Rose A.Z. A framework for analyzing the total economic impacts of terrorist attacks and natural disasters. Journal of Homeland Security and Emergency Management 2009, 6:1-27. (Article 9).
18. Rose A., Lim D. Business interruption losses from natural hazards: conceptual and methodological issues in the case of the Northridge earthquake. Global Environmental Change Part B: Environmental Hazards 2002, 4:1-14.
19. Changnon S.A. Geographical distribution of weather catastrophes in the United States. Physical Geography 2010, 31:29-39.
20. Pielke R.A., Landsea C.W. Normalized hurricane damages in the United States: 1925-95. Weather and Forecasting 1998, 13:621-631.
21. Pielke R.A., Downton M.W. Precipitation and damaging floods: trends in the United States, 1932-97. Journal of Climate 2000, 13:3625-3637.
22. Arakida M. Measuring vulnerability: the ADRC perspective for the theoretical basis and principles of indicator development. Measuring vulnerability to natural hazards 2006, 290-299. United Nations University Press, Tokyo. J. Birkmann (Ed.).
23. Noy I. The macroeconomic consequences of disasters. Journal of Development Economics 2009, 88:221-231.
24. Gardoni P., Murphy C. Gauging the societal impacts of natural disasters using a capability approach. Disasters 2010, 34:619-636.
25. Yamarone R. The trader's guide to key economic indicators 2012, John Wiley & Sons, Hoboken, NJ.
26. England R.W. Measurement of social well-being: alternatives to gross domestic product. Ecological Economics 1998, 25:89-103.
27. Kubiszewski I., Costanza R., Franco C., Lawn P., Talberth J., Jackson T., et al. Beyond GDP: measuring and achieving global genuine progress. Ecological Economics 2013, 93:57-68.
28. International Monetary Fund, Fund Assistance for Countries Facing Exogenous Shocks. Available from: http://www.imf.org/external/np/pdr/sustain/2003/080803.pdf; 2003.
29. Hochrainer S., Linnerooth-Bayer J., Mechler R. The European Union Solidarity Fund: its legitimacy, viability and efficiency. Mitigation and Adaptation Strategies for Global Change 2010, 15:797-810.
30. Hallegatte S., Hourcade J.C., Dumas P. Why economic dynamics matter in assessing climate change damages: illustration on extreme events. Ecological Economics 2007, 62:330-340.
31. Sachs J.D., Mellinger A.D., Gallup J.L. The geography of poverty and wealth. Scientific American 2001, 284:70-75.
32. Dilley M., Chen R.S., Deichmann U., Lerner-Lam A., Arnold M. Natural disaster hotspots: a global risk analysis 2005, The World Bank, Hazard Management Unit, Washington, DC.
33. Nordhaus W.D. Geography and macroeconomics: New data and new findings. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 2006, 103:3510-3517.
34. Wright J.D., Rossi P.H., Wright S.R., Weber-Burdin E. After the clean-up: long-range effects of natural disasters 1979, SAGE Publications, London.
35. Sherrieb K., Norris F.H., Galea S. Measuring capacities for community resilience. Social Indicators Research 2010, 99:227-247.
36. G-Econ, Geographically based economic data. Available from: 〈〉; 2013 [accessed 05.02.13]. http://gecon.yale.edu.
37. United States Bureau of the Census, County Business Patterns, United States Department of Commerce, Washington, DC. Available from: 〈〉; 2013 [accessed 05.02.13]. http://www.census.gov/econ/cbp/.
38. Isserman A.M., Westervelt J. 1.5Million missing numbers: overcoming employment suppression in county business patterns data. International Regional Science Review 2006, 29:311-335.
39. Bureau of Economic Analysis, Regional Data, United State Department of Commerce, Washington, DC. Available from: 〈〉; 2013 [accessed 05.02.13]. http://www.bea.gov/iTable/index_regional.cfm.
40. Downey G.K., Aman G.P. Gross domestic product by state estimation methodology 2006, 42. United States Department of Commerce, Bureau of Economic Analysis, Washington D.C.
41. Hazards and Vulnerability Research Institute, Spatial Hazard Events and Losses Database for the United States, Version 9.0, University of South Carolina, Columbia, SC. Available from: 〈〉; 2013 [accessed 05.02.13]. http://www.sheldus.org.
42. Cutter SL. Social Science Perspectives on Hazards and vulnerability science T. Beer editor. Geophysical Hazards. Springer: New York 2010 pp.17-30.
43. Gall M., Borden K., Cutter S.L. When do losses count? Six fallacies of natural hazards loss data. Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society 2009, 90:799-809.
44. Borden K.A., Cutter S.L. Spatial patterns of natural hazards mortality in the United States. International Journal of Health Geographics 2008, 7:1-13. (Article 64).
45. Spatial Data Mining and Visual Analytics Lab, REDCAP: Regionalization with Constrained Clustering and Partitioning, University of South Carolina, Columbia, SC. Available from: 〈〉; 2013 [accessed 05.02.13]. http://www.spatialdatamining.org/software/redcap.
46. Guo D. Regionalization with dynamically constrained agglomerative clustering and partitioning (REDCAP). International Journal of Geographical Information Science 2008, 22:801-823.
47. Guo D., Wang H. Automatic region building for spatial analysis. Transactions in GIS 2011, 15:29-45.
48. Croitoru A., Guo D., Wang F., Wong D., Agouris P., Stefanidis A. Spatial data analysis and geoinformation extraction. Advanced geoinformation science 2011, 145-204. CRC Press, Boca Raton, FL. C. Yang, D. Wong, Q. Miao, R. Yang (Eds.).
49. Talbot T.O., Kulldorff M., Forand S.P., Haley V.B. Evaluation of spatial filters to create smoothed maps of health data. Statistics in Medicine 2000, 19:2399-2408.
50. Beyer K.M.M., Tiwari C., Rushton G. Five essential properties of disease maps. Annals of the Association of American Geographers 2012, 102:1067-1075.
51. Larmarange J., Vallo R., Yaro S., Msellati P., Meda N. Methods for mapping regional HIV prevalence from Demographic and Health Surveys (DHSs). Cybergeo: European Journal of Geography 2011, (Article 558; 10.4000/cybergeo.24606).
52. Lattin J., Carroll J.D., Green P.E. Analyzing multivariate data 2003, Brooks/Cole, Belmont, CA.
53. Salvador S, Chan P. Determining the number of clusters/segments in hierarchical clustering/segmentation algorithms. In: Proceedings of the sixteenth IEEE international conference on tools with artificial intelligence, Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, Piscataway, NJ; 2004: p. 576-84.
54. Kupfer J.A., Gao P., Guo D. Regionalization of forest pattern metrics for the continental United States using contiguity constrained clustering and partitioning. Ecological Informatics 2012, 9:11-18.
55. Federal Emergency Management Agency, Evaluating a Request for a Major Disaster Declaration, Department of Homeland Security, Washington, DC. Available from: 〈http://www.fema.gov/rebuild/recover/evaluation.shtm〉; 2013 [accessed 05.02.13].
56. Luber G., McGeehin M. Climate change and extreme heat events. American Journal of Preventive Medicine 2008, 35:429-435.
57. Gamble J.L., Hurley B.J., Schultz P.A., Jaglom W.S., Krishnan N., Harris M. Climate change and older Americans: state of the science. Environmental Health Perspectives 2013, 121:15-22.