Stéphane Hallegatte (World Bank Climate Change Group) will present an online talk within the seminar “Anlysis of Complex Systems” on March 19, 2021, 3PM (CET) via Zoom.
If you would like to attend, please email office@csh.ac.at
Title: Modeling the impact of natural disasters on poverty
Abstract:
The impact of a disaster on a country or a community is often measured using one aggregate metric: the total cost of the physical damages. While relevant to estimate financial needs for the reconstruction, this single number hardly represent the impact on the poorest people and households, who suffer disproportionally from disaster but, because they own very little, experience little financial damages. This presentation will propose a different approach to measure the severity of disasters, based on microsimulations in which disaster impacts are represented at the household level. The presentation will use examples from multiple countries and disasters to illustrate the results and their policy implications. Open questions on which more research (and collaborations across disciplines) are needed will also be discussed.
About:
Stéphane Hallegatte is a lead economist with the Climate Change Group of the World Bank. He joined the World Bank in 2012 after 10 years of academic research in environmental economics and climate science for Météo-France, the Centre International de Recherche sur l’Environnement et le Développement, and Stanford University. His research interests include the economics of natural disasters and risk management, climate change adaptation, urban policy and economics, climate change mitigation, and green growth.