Victoria: A new way of evaluating the immediate impact of natural disasters by a professor from Victoria University of Wellington shows that each person in Canterbury lost approximately 150 days of ‘healthy life’ in the aftermath of the 2011 earthquake.
Professor Ilan Noy, Victoria’s Chair in the Economics of Disasters,
has devised a measurement tool inspired by the World Health
Organisation’s Disability Adjusted Life Years (DALY) calculations, which
assesses the cumulative number of ‘lifeyears’, or healthy years,
citizens have lost due to death, injuries, being otherwise significantly
affected such as having to evacuate their homes, and the financial
damages they have incurred.
By adopting a holistic approach that considers the impact of
disasters on human welfare as well as the impact of financial losses on
wellbeing, Professor Noy is able to calculate an aggregate measure of
human lifeyears lost.
“By my calculations New Zealand as a nation lost 180,000 lifeyears
because of the 2011 Canterbury earthquake. This amounts to about 15 days
per person in New Zealand or around 150 days for each person in
Canterbury if you break it down to that region,” says Professor Noy.
“Globally, on average the world loses about 40 million lifeyears per
year because of disasters, the vast majority in low- and middle-income
countries.”
The basic premise of the measuring tool is that the value of human
life should ethically be considered as equal everywhere, while the value
of monetary damages is not, says Professor Noy. This means a dollar
lost in a high-income country such as New Zealand imposes a less adverse
impact on society than a dollar lost in a lower-income country.
“This way of measuring allows us to more meaningfully talk about the
global burden of natural disasters compared to the global burden of
other threats and risks such as terrorism and diseases,” says Professor
Noy.
Professor Noy’s measurement index is included in the new United
Nations Global Assessment Report issued last week, featured on pages
40–42 of the main report (www.preventionweb.net/english/hyogo/gar/2015/en/home/index.html).
Professor Noy will present the index at the UN World Conference on
Disaster Risk Reduction in Sendai, Japan, to be held 14–18 March, in
which UN member states are negotiating a new agreement to replace the
Hyogo Framework for Action—a 10-year plan to make the world safer from
natural hazards, which is one of the three agreements being
re-negotiated this year.