Suchergebnisse

Tropical Storm Hilary hammered Southern California on Sunday, after making a destructive run over Baja California. The damage was real, but thankfully there was no loss of life. But there are a few things we do know—or can surmise—about why this rare event occurred, and the dangers such events will pose to California now and in the future.

AbstractIn this paper, we provide the first household‐level empirical multievent study of temporary internal migration as a consequence of tropical storms. In order to do, so we combine three waves of the Vietnam Household Living Standard Survey with geo‐referenced tropical cyclone data from the Best Track Archive for Climate Stewardship. Based on the resulting panel dataset, we study temporary emigration patterns evolving in the aftermath of occurring storms in the sample communes. We find robust empirical evidence in favor of a significant push effect on temporary migration. Occurring storms increase the likelihood that a household sends members to other regions in Vietnam. Storms also tend to increase the number of absent household members and absence time. Moreover, we show that occurring storms increase both seasonal and long‐term absences.

AbstractWe investigate the vulnerability of tax revenue and its various sources to hurricane damages. To this end, we construct a monthly panel of hurricane losses, tax revenue, and its components, tax rates, and gross domestic product (GDP) for eight Eastern Caribbean countries over 14 years. Panel vector autoregressions (VAR) show that following a hurricane, any effects are generally short term. The cumulative expected loss in total tax revenue is 5.3%. Revenue derived from international trade and transactions and domestic goods and service are the most negatively affected. Countries with higher value added, as well as international trade and transactions tax rates, appear to be able to buffer the negative impact better, whereas higher property taxes amplify the negative impact of damaging hurricanes on this revenue source.

Purpose
Tropical storms Urduja and Vinta battered the Philippines in December 2017. Despite advances in disaster risk reduction efforts of the country, the twin December storms caused numerous deaths in the Visayas and Mindanao regions. Analysis of these events shows that alerts raised during the Pre-Disaster Risk Assessment (PDRA) for both storms were largely ineffective because they were too broad and general calling for forced evacuations in too many provinces. Repeated multiple and general warnings that usually do not end up in floods or landslides, desensitize people and result in the cry-wolf effect where communities do not respond with urgency when needed. It was unlike the previous execution of PDRA from 2014 to early 2017 by the National Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Council (NDRRMC), which averted mass loss of lives in many severely impacted areas because of hazard-specific, area-focused and time-bound warnings. PDRA must reinstate specific calls, where mayors of communities are informed by phone hours in advance of imminent danger to prompt and ensure immediate action. Mainstreaming Climate Change Adaptation and Disaster Risk Reduction information using probabilistic (multi-scenario) hazard maps is also necessary for an effective early warning system to elicit appropriate response from the community. The paper aims to discuss these issues.


Design/methodology/approach
Methods of early warning through the PDRA of the National Disaster Mitigation and Management Council (NDRRMC) of the Philippines during tropical storm Urduja and Typhoon Vinta were assessed in this study and compared to the previous PDRA system from 2014 to early 2017.


Findings
It was found out that the numerous casualties were due to inadequate warning issued during the approach of the tropical cyclones. During an impending hazard, warnings must be accurate, reliable, understandable and timely. Despite the availability of maps that identified safe zones for different communities, warnings raised during the PDRA for both tropical cyclones were deemed too general calling for evacuations of whole provinces. As such, not all communities were evacuated in a timely manner because of failure in the key elements of an effective early warning system.


Originality/value
To avoid future disasters from happening, it is recommended that the PDRA reinstate its hazards-specific, area-focused and time-bound warnings. Similarly, to increase the resilience of communities, more work on mainstreaming of Climate Change Adaptation and Disaster Risk and Vulnerability Reduction systems for communities must be done as well. Learning from the lessons of these previous disasters will enable communities, their leaders and every stakeholder, not to repeat the same mistakes in the future.

AbstractTropical storms are among the most devastating natural disasters in the USA. Climate change is projected to make them even more destructive, and the number of people and properties at risk has steadily increased over the past several decades. Migration is often seen by scholars as an adaptation strategy to reduce exposure to future natural disasters. However, studies of migration after tropical storms have led to inconsistent results and have not analyzed post-storm migration from the viewpoint of exposure to future events. This paper adopts an innovative approach to estimate "excess migration" associated with tropical storms using Bayesian hierarchical models, and decomposes migration by risk of exposure to natural disasters of the origin and destination to understand whether migrants move to safer areas or rather riskier ones. Findings indicate that excess migration after tropical storms is rare and generally fails to reduce the number of people at risk of experiencing future natural disasters. Only the most destructive tropical storms are associated with significant excess migration. Finally, findings further suggest that neither the amount of post-disaster assistance nor the socio-demographic characteristics of the affected counties are strongly associated with excess migration.

AbstractThis paper investigates the impact of four historical tropical storms on the Colonial Bank's operations in the British Caribbean between 1922 and 1927. By employing a high-frequency data set of bank transactions, this study reveals how these severe shocks influenced the banking activities of clients. The findings reveal a multifaceted and significant impact of tropical storm strikes on the banks' operations, particularly a surge in borrowing via overdrafts of current accounts. Moreover, the study reveals the multifaceted nature of such storms' impact on the bank's functionality, with affected branches demonstrating an uptick in deposits and savings as a strategy to mitigate funding shocks. The results of the econometric analysis indicate that the impact of such storms on banks' functionality during the early 20th century was significant and multidimensional. It highlights the critical role that the Colonial Bank plays in facilitating recovery from these devastating events and contributes to the existing literature by studying multiple shocks at different geographical locations and time frames.

This paper investigates the impact of tropical storms on government debt accumulation and decomposition. To this end, we combine quarterly debt data and tropical storm loss data for the period 1993–2013 for the Eastern Caribbean. Our econometric results show that damaging storms cause debt to increase up to three quarters after the event, where this increase can be considerable for damaging enough storms. Much of this increase in debt is due to borrowing from foreign lenders by the central government. At the same time, there is also some shifting of the share of debt toward public corporations, although these tend to react more by financing from domestic sources.