Learning from Hurricane Maria’s Impacts on Puerto Rico: A Progress Report

A neuroscience-based analysis of impacts of disaster memory on economic valuation.

“…It is not uncommon for both monetary and morbidity costs to be reassessed over time. For example, the reassessment of the death toll Maria took on Puerto Rico changed how serious it was seen (Main et al, 2021). Theoretically, these reassessments change the remembered cost of past crises.…”

“…For example, the successful mitigation of the Y2K crisis (functional infrastructure was saved by effective intervention) was not communicated well to the public, and it was dismissed as hype and quickly forgotten (Loeb, 2019;Manjoo, 2009). Similarly, the death toll from Hurricane Maria in Puerto Rico was originally underestimated, only to be revised upward much later (Main et al, 2021;Robles et al, 2017). Linking existing economic and forecasting studies as well as empirical events data to our model leads to several important observations.…”

“…The units in our model were assigned randomly, so we cannot model these effects in our current model, but future studies could examine how reframing media can change whether an effect is considered reassessments or an alleviation (Cologna et al, 2017;Gibson & Mullins, 2020;Kousky, 2010;Loftus & Banaji, 1989;Main et al, 2021;Pérez Sánchez et al, 2022). Questions of disaster versus mitigation, such as "are you worried about more floods?"…”

“…The fact that small changes in exogenous inputs to a content-addressable memory can shift the components of the remembered pattern (Figure 2d) provides an explanation for well-established priming and framing effects, such as how changing questions can change recalled memories (Loftus & Palmer, 1974), how changing contexts of potential options can change decisions (Simonson & Tversky, 1992), and how changing attention between positive and negative frames can change decisions (Tversky & Kahneman, 1981). The units in our model were assigned randomly, so we cannot model these effects in our current model, but future studies could examine how reframing media can change whether an effect is considered reassessments or an alleviation (Cologna et al, 2017; Gibson & Mullins, 2020; Kousky, 2010; Loftus & Banaji, 1989; Main et al, 2021; Pérez Sánchez et al, 2022). Questions of disaster versus mitigation, such as “are you worried about more floods?” versus “what has been done to mitigate the floods?” can change memories from negative to positive.…”

Cap. 23. Caribe estadounidense. En: La Quinta Evaluación del Clima

“…Aún no se sabe con certeza por qué se produce un exceso de mortalidad durante períodos prolongados después de un evento natural; la comprensión de estos mecanismos requiere la identificación de la causa específica de mortalidad y de las distintas condiciones que conducen a la muerte, incluidas las infraestructuras, la capacidad crítica de construcción, la vivienda y las condiciones de vida. En la actualidad, un proyecto dirigido por el Instituto Nacional de Normas y Tecnología está avanzando en este sentido 298 .…”