As long as we're on the subject of disasters, here is NOAA's estimate of the cost of large disasters over the past half century:
Both the number of big disasters per year and the cost per year have gone up about 6x since the '80s.
34 thoughts on “Raw data: The cost of disasters”
Comments are closed.
I'd be curious to know how much is due to the increasing value of vulnerable infrastructure (more people living in disaster zones, and their homes/roads/businesses costing more to fix), and how much is due to increasing frequency/intensity of disasters.
The country keeps growing, and we're certainly not moving to the places that are less likely to have disasters (Eastern Montana, anyone?).
the population hasn't increased ~sixfold since 1980, so it is unlikely to be just because there are more of us.
More of us living in areas we shouldn't, absolutely, and yeah, probably real estate is more valuable than it once was (although counterpoint: people move to the gulf coast because it is cheap, certainly not because it is nice), but increasing severity of disasters is absolutely playing a role.
That said, my personal experience (so, anecdata) is that the gulf coast in particular is absolute shit at preparation. Houston was without power for a week earlier this summer because the wind from a cat-1 downed trees, and the grid operator was completely incompetent at identifying where the damage was such that it wasted several days just driving around physically eyeballing lines before it could even start repairs. Other states have (for decades!) grids with sensors and feedback mechanisms such that the operators can tell automatically where lines are down, but not Texas!
The Southeast definitely has a braindead unwillingness to invest in hardening infrastructure against damage. I have no idea what motivates it. When I bought doublepaned windows for my house here, the vendors I got quotes from all actively discouraged me from investing in hurricane-proof impact glass, saying "you aren't required to get it." It's baffling--what kind of salesman recommends against the customer buying the more expensive product, when it's what the customer repeatedly says he wants?
Re: people move to the gulf coast because it is cheap
This is absolutely not true in Florida. The cost of housing in any place remotely desirable is through the roof. This is no longer a cheap cost of living state,
"This is absolutely not true in Florida"
The median house price in Florida is ~$400k, which is less than the total US median, and Florida is in the bottom (or top, depending on your perspective) quintile in terms of taxes.
I'm sure it's higher in Miami (and this one guy claims his swamp-mansion hotelhouse in Palm Beach is worth a billion dollars), and Florida, along with Texas, might be among the most expensive places to live in the Gulf Coast, but the region as a whole is cheap.
" I have no idea what motivates it. "
If you spend public resources on infrastructure, education, healthcare, etc., non-whites might see some benefit from it and we can't have that.
I live in NC. We lost power for 12 hours even though we only had intermittent high winds and not that much rain. A few years ago the whole area lost power from an ice storm. After things were back to normal there was a survey of residents in my city about support for burying power lines if customers had to pay more. The monthly increase was specified which was fairly reasonable. People overwhelmingly supported burying the lines but Duke Power refused. The Netherlands has a much more secure power grid because their lines are buried and flood proof. It’s expensive in the short run but worth it given the likely increase in these kinds of disasters.
https://www.csmonitor.com/layout/set/amphtml/World/Making-a-difference/Change-Agent/2012/1204/Would-the-lights-go-out-if-superstorm-Sandy-hit-the-Netherlands-Nope
Which is why public utilities should never be privately owned.
Cost won't be linear with population. At least not in a given locality if it is popular. Where I live, the population has gone from ~117,000 in 1990 to ~150,000 today, but the price/"value" of housing has definitely increased by more than 28%.
From the NOAA report:
"In other words, the increase in population and material wealth over the last several decades are an important cause for the rising costs. These trends are further complicated by the fact that much of the growth has taken place in vulnerable areas like coasts, the wildland-urban interface, and river floodplains. Vulnerability is especially high where building codes are insufficient for reducing damage from extreme events. This is part of the reason that the 2010s decade is far costlier than the 2000s, 1990s, or 1980s (all inflation adjusted to 2023 dollars)."
It's the combination of everything. More frequent and extreme natural disasters combined with more people, with more expensive things, over more and more areas at risk.
Re: These trends are further complicated by the fact that much of the growth has taken place in vulnerable areas like coasts, the wildland-urban interface, and river floodplains.
Don't forget the sprawl in places like California where more people are now living close to fire-prone forests
That's the wildland-urban interface.
Also as noted, building codes are shit. And under constant pressure from conservative groups for "making housing too expensive". And that's not even touching the lack of enforcement. We CAN build energy efficient and resilient housing, we choose not to because $$. So, insurers and owners end up paying for the loss of not building the stuff right in the first place.
See also: Boeing.
Yeah, I don't think this is entirely (or perhaps even mostly) just that we have disasters that are more severe on average than in the past.
The "targets" for them are a lot more value-dense than in the past.
I recognize that inflation is, likely, the a common metric to reflect the increase in prices, over time. However, I suspect the chart is also capturing population density/increases in population, rises in the price of homes (real estate has historically increased in value faster than average inflation), high cost of replacement of infrastructure.
Basically, I really doubt that an inflation adjustment is adequate to view this time series: some of the chart's increase is a form of inflation, not captured by the inflation adjustment.
Apropos of Nothing:
Many People Are Telling Me That The Haitians Are Sponsoring An Ad With These Words:
WOMEN!!! DON'T LET THE REPUBLICANS ABORT YOUR VOTE!!!!
There are a lot more people and property in the US today. 220 million in 1980. 330 million now.
Thanks for that newsflash and for approximating a normal human being today (so far).
Justin's math is impeccable, though, you have to admit. A 50% increase in population is surely the adequate explanation a 600% increase in the cost of disasters.
Is there some law of physics or economics which requires the cost to go up a certain amount with increase in population and property? Silly.
"here some law of physics ... which requires the cost to go up a certain amount with increase in population and property?" Yes.
You've certainly remained consistent however.
I would have expected such estimates to come from FEMA rather than NOAA.
Everyone loves socialism when a disaster strikes their hometown. I think it’s perfectly fine for governments to spend money to improve people’s lives after a disaster, but I also think it’s perfectly fine for governments to spend money to improve people’s lives before disasters too.
Looks like Kevin missed his chance to fit a quadratic to this series. The right hand point may be low only because the even higher cost of the second half of the current decade, yet to come, has not yet been included. My eyeball says it is right on target.
Heh, Looks like a sigmoid to me; or, if you like a rescaled and translated arctan.
The point I was trying to make above (and below) is that there is no inflection, i.e., the acceleration is not decreasing. The inflection is an illusion due to the right-hand point being misplaced to the right by five years.
That was supposed to be a joke. I don't tell jokes very well, at least, not online.
Please accept my apology. I generally enjoy your comments and should have picked that up.
Given that we are only halfway thru the 2020s, the consistency of the curve would be clearer if Kevin had plotted the right-hand point at only half a decadal time step after the 2010s.
I'd like to see this calc'ed out with constant-house and constant-population adjustments. As Justin points out, the population is 50% higher. The median new home was $84.8k in '85, which adjusted for inflation ought to be $241.1k, but instead is $420.6k.
Anyway, the count and the cost are still way up -- all other things being equal. But then the thresholds for disaster declarations and relief must be different too, after 40 years. I ain't gonna chase that.
It's also the cost of public infrastructure; it wasn't cheap to repair the NYC subway and sewer systems after Sandy. Nor New Orleans.
Here in Maine, last winter we had horrific flooding in the mountains, and there was a lot more roads and phone polls that needed repair than houses. And they were very costly repairs, requiring specialized crews in many cases.
Yes, it should be adjusted for housing inflation, not general inflation.
"The cost of disasters"...............
This is a particularly tough one because inflation is just a small part of the equation.
You have housing costs which are affected by inflation, AND the usual suspects of greedy real estate agents and banks themselves.
THEN you add in insurers. They raise their rates (which is inflationary in itself) in non disaster years as well as right after a disaster. Add into THEIR costs the repairs that insurers pay for which is sometimes affected by nefarious contractors who issue outrageous bills taking advantage of desperate homeowners trying to get things back to normal.
So "disaster costs" feed on themselves.
Never mind increasing numbers of catastrophes.............
I'd be curious about inflation over that same period, along with additional density, population and property (starting with houses).