A non-monetary global measure of the direct impact of natural disasters

Abstract

The standard way in which disaster damages are measured involves examining separately the number of fatalities, of injuries, of people otherwise affected, and the financial damage that natural disasters cause. Here, we propose a novel way to aggregate measures of disaster impact, which aims to overcome many of the difficulties previously identified in the literature. This new index is similar, but conceptually different, from the World Health Organization’s calculation of Disability Adjusted Life Years (DALYs) lost from the burden of diseases and injuries (WHO, 2013). We convert all measures of impact into “lifeyears” units. After analyzing worldwide trends in lifeyears lost to disasters, we conclude with a very preliminary assessment of the likely impact, in lost lifeyears, of the current Ebola epidemic in the three most affected countries in West Africa.