MODELING THE REGIONAL IMPACT OF NATURAL DISASTER AND RECOVERY - A GENERAL FRAMEWORK AND AN APPLICATION TO HURRICANE-ANDREW

Two common features of natural disasters are intense regional impact a nd the call immediately after the event to estimate the economic impac t of recovery and reconstruction. The broad purpose of this paper is t o help fill the gap in the regional science literature that addresses this issue. Initially, the impact estimation problem is presented conc eptually. Using a general regional model schematic, direct disaster im pacts on exogenous variables, endogenous variables, and model linkages are identified. Next, the conceptual problem is adapted for practical application. This translation has two aspects: (1) modifying the dire ct impacts for a specific model (common variants from the schematic ar e considered) and (2) estimating those impacts from available data. On e component of the latter identifies primary sources of information ty pically available at the time of a natural disaster and indicates how secondary data may be used to complement, cross-check, and expand thos e data. A second component identifies areas of no information or high uncertainty and discusses treatment of that information gap in empiric al analysis. A final section applies the research to the problem of es timating the impact of Hurricane Andrew on the economy of Florida.