With the shift from a hazard-centered disaster paradigm to one that places emphasis on vulnerability and resilience, disasters triggered by natural hazards have begun to be perceived as unnatural occurrences. To date, the theoretical conceptualization and empirical measures of vulnerability and resilience remain subjects of contentions. This survey of the empirical economic literature aims to describe the progress made in the conceptualization and measurement of the economic dimensions of vulnerability and resilience in the context of natural hazards, and to provide useful insights for policy-making. Economic vulnerability and economic resilience, interacting with the hazard itself, and the exposure of populations and physical assets, are considered to be critical determinants of the resulting impacts of disasters. The empirical evidence provides systematic support for the hypothesis that apart from the characteristics of the hazards, the potential for people and economies to avoid adverse impacts and their capacity to withstand and rebound from a disaster are influenced by a confluence of socio-economic factors.

What determines disaster fatalities? We develop a tool to estimate tropical cyclone-induced fatalities in the Philippine provinces, and to explain the variability of these fatalities across provinces using an evidence-based approach. We construct a new provincial-level panel dataset, and use statistical methods to assess the influence of socioeconomic vulnerability (i.e., levels of economic and social development, urbanization, governance), exposure (i.e., population, topography, and geography), and hazard characteristics (i.e., rainfall volume and wind speed) on the resulting fatalities from tropical cyclones. We find strong evidence that socioeconomic development and good local governance reduces disaster fatalities, while unplanned urbanization is associated with more fatalities.Exposure, including topography, and tropical cyclone strength are likewise important determinants of fatalities.However, disaster fatalities appear to be influenced much more by socioeconomic vulnerability and exposure, than by the hazard itself. We quantify this difference in order to contribute to policy planning at national and subnational scales.

This is an advance summary of a forthcoming article in the Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Natural Hazard Science. Please check back later for the full article. About four decades ago, the discourse on disasters was largely about natural hazards and their characteristics. The failure of this approach to substantially explain disaster impacts led to a change in paradigm. This new paradigm places its emphasis on the influence of vulnerability or resilience on the resulting impacts of disaster—be they direct or indirect. Disasters triggered by natural hazards have since been perceived as unnatural occurrences brought about by a confluence of societal factors. Economic vulnerability and economic resilience, interacting with the hazard itself and the exposure of populations and economic systems, are considered critical determinants of the resulting disaster impacts. The theoretical conceptualization and empirical measures of vulnerability and resilience remain, however, as subjects of contentions. Some argue that vulnerability and resilience are different expressions that refer to one and the same thing; the former is viewed from a negative standpoint; and the latter, from a positive standpoint. This implies that what measures one, measures the other. Other arguments consider resilience as one of the subcomponents of vulnerability, with the other subcomponents being one or some of the following: sensitivity, susceptibility, fragility, adaptive capacity, and coping capacity. However, what these subcomponents mean and cover are not clear-cut, thereby adding to the complexity of developing appropriate measurement tools. An apparently dominant view is that, while vulnerability and resilience have similar underlying factors, they refer to different things. For instance, economic vulnerability and economic resilience are both shaped by the level of development, quality of development governance, and characteristics of development (widespread inequality, rapid and unplanned urbanization, etc.), yet vulnerability is considered a pre-disaster concern; resilience, a post-disaster concern. Here, vulnerability is taken as that component of disaster risk that explains the varying impacts on elements (people, assets, systems) that have the same level of exposure to a given hazard. Resilience is what enables the exposed elements to withstand, cope, and recover from disaster impacts. Thus, in terms of disaster risk reduction priorities, vulnerability is typically linked to prevention, preparedness, and mitigation; resilience, to rehabilitation, reconstruction, and recovery. To date, the intensified application of economic theory resulted in important advances in concretizing the concepts of economic vulnerability and resilience, as well as in measuring them. Nonetheless, alongside these advances some refinements are needed, including the following: address the overlaps with other dimensions, for instance, to social vulnerability and resilience; apply a systematic method for identifying a plausible set of indicators to capture and measure the distinct economic vulnerability and resilience of each element in different contexts and circumstances; and translate the measures into tools for systematically identifying and prioritizing a set of policies and actions to reduce vulnerability and strengthen resilience. Overall, the ultimate aim is for a sound and widely accepted set of concepts and measures that can be easily adjusted for practical application in different contexts (e.g., developed and developing countries), levels of assessment and governance (e.g., macro and micro; community, city, province, and country), hazard types (e.g., meteorological and geologic), and elements at risk.

Do floods affect the probability for urban households to suffer from diseases? We study Cagayan de Oro, a highly-urbanized city in the Philippines that exhibits many of the common characteristics of urban areas in middle-income countries. We find that bronchitis, respiratory tract infection, influenza, chicken pox, measles, typhoid fever, diarrhea, leptospirosis, dengue, hypertension, and heart diseases are each associated with either one or a combination of the flood variables: exposure, height, or duration. We quantify their incremental incidence due to flood exposure, and provide indicative estimates on their cost implications both to the government and to the disease-affected households. In general, results reveal that flood-induced diseases cause large cost to the government as well as heavy financial burden on affected families, particularly among the economically disadvantaged. Cost estimation is undertaken for the floodplains of Cagayan de Oro City, and expanded to all urban areas in the Philippines to serve as inputs for discussions on the expansion or redesign of policies aimed at ensuring people's safety from disasters, diseases, and impoverishment within a typical urban setting.

How can a government prioritize disaster risk management policies across regions and types of interventions? Using an economic model to assess welfare risk and resilience to disasters, this article systematically tackles the questions: (1) How much asset and welfare risks does each region in the Philippines face from riverine flood disasters? (2) How resilient is each region to riverine flood disasters? (3) What are, per region, the possible interventions to strengthen resilience to riverine flood disasters and what will be their measured benefit? We study the regions of the Philippines to demonstrate the channels through which macroeconomic asset and output losses from disasters translate to consumption and welfare losses at the micro‐economic level. Apart from the regional prioritizations, we identify a menu of policy options ranked according to their level of effectiveness in increasing resilience and reducing welfare risk from riverine floods. The ranking of priorities varies for different regions when their level of expected value at risk is different. This suggests that there are region‐specific conditions and drivers that need to be integrated into considerations and policy decisions, so that these are effectively addressed.