What do hazards cost the Nation?

By Office of Risk and Resilience

The collection and analysis of long-term disaster loss data is a key part of better understanding and mitigating hazard impacts, strengthening emergency response, planning and preparedness, as well as identifying research gaps. Without these data it is impossible to establish a baseline against which to measure the effects of disaster reduction interventions.

Understanding what hazards cost the nation in lives, dollars, impacts to long-term health, as well as impacts to natural and cultural resources helps us:

Communicate the cumulative costs of these hazards
Inform national and regional planning efforts
Determine where to focus risk-related efforts and resources

USGS Office of Risk and Resilience (ORR) is working with partners to better understand the cost of hazard events to the many publics that we serve. We seek to gather information related to hazard loss that goes beyond just lives and dollars by also considering longer-term and/or disproportionate impacts to different communities Examples of USGS disaster loss data include:

National Landslide Damages and Losses | U.S. Geological Survey

ShakeMap Atlas V4 and AtlasCat | USGS Science Data Catalog

Disaster loss reporting

Collecting and reporting information on the costs of hazard impacts is not straightforward. These data are rarely collected in a standardized format. Because response and recovery activities mostly occur at local, county, or state levels, these data are collected inconsistently across the country, and these entities have little incentive to report their information up to the Federal government. For more on these challenges, and opportunities for disaster loss reporting in the United States, please see Challenges and opportunities for Sendai framework disaster loss reporting in the United States, a paper led by ORR authors in collaboration with the Science for Disaster Reduction Interagency Working Group (SDR).

USGS is working to overcome these challenges by working with Federal agency partners, as well as state, Tribal, territorial, and local partners. The USGS leads the National Landslide Hazard Risk Reduction Working Group and its Landslide Loss Interest Group, fostering partnerships with landslide experts at the regional and local level to understand and reduce losses. ORR has worked with federal interagency partners in the SDR to develop an annual reporting protocol for disaster loss across the United States ORR has worked with interagency partners in the SDR to develop an annual reporting protocol for disaster loss across the U.S.