Abstract
Benefit-cost analyses are required for proposed flood alleviation and sea defense schemes in the United Kingdom. However, generally flood impacts such as stress, worry and evacuation have been left as ‘intangibles’. Economic theory predicts that the avoidance of such impacts is a real benefit of flood alleviation. But only those impacts for which there exist a value concensus as to the bases of their measurement can be included within the framework of economic efficiency benefit-cost analyses.
In recent benefit-cost analyses we have, therefore, employed exploratory procedures to measure worry, health damage and other traditionally ‘intangible’ flood losses. A method of deriving the monetary equivalents of these impacts has also proved both feasible and to have face validity. The magnitude of these losses generally exceeds the physical damage caused by flooding.
Since worry has been shown to correlate with perceived risk, such evaluations include willingness-to-pay to reduce risk to health and safety. Estimating the risk to life in a particular location is problematic since the risk is almost wholly a function of the behavioural choices made by those at risk. Results of several studies of behavioural response to warnings and to discovering water are discussed.
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© 1987 Plenum Press, New York
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Green, C.H., Penning-Rowsell, E.C., Parker, D.J. (1987). Estimating the Risk from Flooding and Evaluating Worry. In: Covello, V.T., Lave, L.B., Moghissi, A., Uppuluri, V.R.R. (eds) Uncertainty in Risk Assessment, Risk Management, and Decision Making. Advances in Risk Analysis, vol 4. Springer, Boston, MA. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4684-5317-1_14
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4684-5317-1_14
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