Improving the evidence base on the costs of disasters: Key findings from an OECD survey

This document presents the results of a cross country survey which did collect actual data on recorded socioeconomic disaster losses as well as of a complementary survey that sought to gain insights into the use of such data to inform countries’ disaster risk management policies. The document also includes a desk review of ex ante economic disaster loss assessments across OECD countries.

The goal is to understand ongoing efforts of OECD countries in collecting information on socio-economic losses of disasters ex post. The report also analyses the uses of information on ex ante socio-economic loss estimations in terms of informing evaluations of disaster risk reduction investments. This is a challenging area: data collection by governments remains often spurious and existing international data bases also present some shortcomings in completeness and comparability of socio-economic loss information. In this context, the research presented in the report aimed at understanding the underlying institutional factors, and to identify the potential barriers. The goal was to understand the key drivers and potential bottlenecks countries face in recording and using disaster-related loss information.