Abstract
Abstract. The total losses caused by natural disasters have spatial heterogeneity due to the different economic development levels inside the disaster-hit areas. This paper uses scenarios of direct economic loss to introduce the sectors' losses caused by the 2008 Wenchuan earthquake (2008 WCE) in Beijing, utilizing the Adaptive Regional Input–Output (ARIO) model and the Inter-regional ripple effect (IRRE) model. The purpose is to assess the ripple effects of indirect economic loss and spatial heterogeneity of both direct and indirect economic loss at the scale of the smallest administrative divisions of China (streets, villages, and towns). The results indicate that the district of Beijing with the most severe indirect economic loss is the Chaoyang District; the finance and insurance industry (15, see Table 1) of Chaowai Street suffers the most in the Chaoyang District, which is 1.46 times that of its direct economic loss. During 2008–2014, the average annual GDP (gross domestic product) growth rate of Beijing was decreased 3.63 % by the catastrophe. Compared with the 8 % of GDP growth rate target, the decreasing GDP growth rate is a significant and noticeable economic impact, and it can be efficiently mitigated by increasing rescue effort and by supporting the industries which are located in the seriously damaged regions.
Highlights
Economic losses caused by frequent natural disasters have increased dramatically and pose serious challenges to the world’s sustainable development and human safety (Munich Re, 2002)
In order to solve this problem, the scenario is set with an earthquake with the same intensity as the 2008 Wenchuan earthquake occurring in BJ and with BJ having the same direct economic loss ratio in 17 sectors as that of the Sichuan province (SCP)
When rescue efforts intensify from rescue scenario A to rescue scenario C (150 % of rescue efforts), the indirect economic loss is reduced by USD 45.1 billion, and the percentage of indirect economic loss to total losses is reduced from 42 to 17 %
Summary
Economic losses caused by frequent natural disasters have increased dramatically and pose serious challenges to the world’s sustainable development and human safety (Munich Re, 2002). In April 2016, earthquakes with a surface wave magnitude (MS) of 7 occurred within 8 days in succession in Japan (MS = 7.3), Ecuador (MS = 7.8), Burma (MS = 7.2), and Afghanistan (MS = 7.1), which caused large total economic losses to these countries. The large economic losses caused by natural disasters should be assessed more accurately to improve the awareness of disaster impacts and increase the effectiveness of disaster prevention and mitigation. The direct economic loss is caused by the physical damage when the disaster occurs and the induced physical impact left after (Cochrane, 1997). The indirect economic loss is generated by business interruption, imbalance between supply and demand, disorder between forward output, and backward supply of sectors due to physical damage
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