The Hidden Costs of Coastal Hazards:
Implications for Risk Assessment and Mitigation
The Hidden Costs of Coastal Hazards: Implications for Risk Assessment and Mitigation, by The H. John Heinz III Center for Science, Economics, and the Environment (Island Press November, 1999).
Society has limited hazard mitigation dollars to invest. Which actions will be most cost effective, considering the true range of impacts and costs incurred? In 1997, The Heinz Center began a two-year study with a panel of experts to help develop new strategies to identify and reduce the costs of weather-related hazards associated with rapidly increasing coastal development activities. The Hidden Costs of Coastal Hazards presents the panel's findings, offering the first in-depth study that considers the costs of hazards to natural resources, social institutions, business, and the built environment. Using the case study of Hurricane Hugo, which struck South Carolina in 1989, it provides for the first time information on the full range of economic costs caused by a major coastal hazard event. The book describes and examines unreported, undocumented, and hidden costs such as losses due to business interruption, reduction in property values, interruption of social services, psychological trauma, damage to natural systems, and others; examines the concepts of risk and vulnerability; discusses conventional approaches to risk assessment and the emerging area of vulnerability assessment; recommends a comprehensive framework for developing and implementing mitigation strategies; documents the impact of Hurricane Hugo; and provides insight from some of the survivors (description from the Heinz Center Web site: www.heinzctr.org).
To order: www.islandpress.org/books/order/order.html
Disasters and Democracy:
The Politics of Extreme Natural Events
Disasters and Democracy: The Politics of Extreme Natural Events, by Rutherford H. Platt et al. (Island Press 1999). In recent years, the number of presidential declarations of "major disasters" has skyrocketed. Such declarations make stricken areas eligible for federal emergency relief funds that greatly reduce their costs. But is federalizing the costs of disasters helping to lighten the overall burden of disasters or is it making matters worse? Does it remove incentives for individuals and local communities to take measures to protect themselves? Are people more likely to invest in property in hazardous locations in the belief that, if worse comes to worst, the federal government will bail them out? Disasters and Democracy addresses the political response to natural disasters, focusing specifically on the changing role of the federal government from distant observer to immediate responder and principal financier of disaster costs (description from the Island Press Web site: www.islandpress.org/books/bookdata/disasdem.html).
To order: www.islandpress.org/books/order/order.html
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