Measuring Natural Risks in the Philippines: Socioeconomic Resilience and Wellbeing Losses

Abstract

The Policy Research Working Paper Series disseminates the findings of work in progress to encourage the exchange of ideas about development issues. An objective of the series is to get the findings out quickly, even if the presentations are less than fully polished. The papers carry the names of the authors and should be cited accordingly. The findings, interpretations, and conclusions expressed in this paper are entirely those of the authors. They do not necessarily represent the views of the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development/World Bank and its affiliated organizations, or those of the Executive Directors of the World Bank or the governments they represent.

From Poverty to Disaster and Back: a Review of the Literature

“…the repair or replacement value of the assets that have been damaged or destroyed by the disaster. This is the main rationale for the introduction of the concepts of socio-economic resilience and wellbeing losses in Hallegatte et al (2016a, b, c) or Walsh and Hallegatte (2020): the traditional metrics used to measure the severity of disasters is misleading because it underestimates the impacts of the poorest who have few assets to lose.…”

“…In Hallegatte et al (2016a, b, c), it is estimated that if all disasters could be prevented next year, the number of people in extreme poverty would be immediately reduced by around 26 million (7 million if all the most optimistic assumptions are combined, and 77 million if we retain only the most pessimistic assumptions). In the Philippines only, a more precise analysis suggests that almost half a million Filipinos per year face transient consumption poverty due to natural disasters (Walsh and Hallegatte 2020).…”

Well-being loss: a comprehensive metric for household disaster resilience

“…The household model builds on Walsh and Hallegatte's socioeconomic resilience model 19 , but adds to it by (1) explicitly including household labour income, rent and mortgage payments, and (2) linking the household income to the impact of the disaster on jobs and labor income, as estimated by the ARIO model. The model performs micro-simulations of households' consumption over a 10-year post-disaster recovery period, and determines changes in well-being as a result of the earthquake.…”

“…The well-being quantification methodology in this paper integrates the three aspects of sustainability: environmental (the impact of the hazard), economic (the cost of damages and implication for jobs and income), and social (the distributional impact of the shock and the role of socioeconomic factors). It builds on previous research 18,19 and uses a multi-stage simulation that explicitly quantifies damages to the built environment, post-disaster dynamics of economic sectors, and changes in household consumption across socioeconomic groups, while propagating uncertainties associated with disasters modeling. While previous approaches for evaluating disaster management policies typically focused on assessing the effect of either pre-disaster risk reduction [20][21][22] , preparedness and early warning 23 , or insurance 21 , the proposed methodology allows evaluation of policies pertaining to all stages of the disaster management cycle 24 .…”

A Conceptual Time-Varying Flood Resilience Index for Urban Areas: Munich City

“…On the contrary, the assessment of flood resilience faces many challenges, including its definition, dimensions used (e.g., social, economic, or physical aspects), and methods of quantification [11,12]. Nevertheless, there is a growing number of research projects and studies aiming at quantifying flood resilience using integrated [13] or multi-criteria [14] approaches, assessing climate variability [15] or the impact of infrastructure [16,17] while considering socioeconomic aspects [18]. Governance strategies for improving flood resilience have also been studied [19].…”