City Research Online

Natural disasters, the economy and population vulnerability as a vicious cycle with exogenous hazards

Sodhi, M. (2016). Natural disasters, the economy and population vulnerability as a vicious cycle with exogenous hazards. Journal of Operations Management, 45(1), pp. 101-113. doi: 10.1016/j.jom.2016.05.010

Abstract

One way to understand the growing impact of disasters is as the output of a positive feedback, or reinforcing, loop. This paper hypothesizes that population vulnerability of a country transforms exogenous hazards to disaster impact for that country, which negatively impacts its economy as measured by per capita income and its growth. This impact in turn increases the vulnerability of the country’s population thus creating a reinforcing loop. Therefore, like the output of any positive feedback loop, disaster impact would grow exponentially. Having analysed data over 50 years (1963-2012) and 179 countries, we find the results to be consistent with this conceptual model. We also find that disaster impact worldwide has indeed grown exponentially over this period even after normalizing for the growing global population and global income. These findings indicate the existence of a feedback loop that requires strategic rethinking about disaster management and development jointly to break this vicious cycle.

Publication Type: Article
Additional Information: © 2016, Elsevier. Licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/
Publisher Keywords: Disasters, natural hazards, strategic humanitarian operations, development, country-level analysis, vulnerability
Subjects: G Geography. Anthropology. Recreation > GB Physical geography
H Social Sciences > HD Industries. Land use. Labor
Departments: Bayes Business School > Management
SWORD Depositor:
[thumbnail of ViciousCycle_FINAL_SUBM_20March2016.pdf]
Preview
Text - Accepted Version
Available under License : See the attached licence file.

Download (511kB) | Preview
[thumbnail of Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International Licence]
Preview
Text (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International Licence) - Other
Download (201kB) | Preview

Export

Add to AnyAdd to TwitterAdd to FacebookAdd to LinkedinAdd to PinterestAdd to Email

Downloads

Downloads per month over past year

View more statistics

Actions (login required)

Admin Login Admin Login