Disaster and regional research

Abstract

Natural hazards, such as earthquakes, hurricanes, tornados, and flooding, damage physical and human capital and disrupt economic activities, leading to a disaster situation in the regional economy [According to Okuyama and Chang (Modeling spatial and economic impacts of disasters, Springer, 2004), a natural hazard is the occurrence of a natural event, such as an earthquake, hurricane, flooding, sever weather condition, and so on, and disaster is its consequences to our society. These two terms, hazard and disaster, are used with these definitions throughout this chapter]. The economic effects of such disasters have been investigated and evaluated using regional economic models. In recent developments in terms of climate change and resilience of a society as well as globalized economic system, research on regional and interregional effects of disasters has become more important than ever. This chapter argues that regional science research is central to disaster impact analysis and proposes the World Disaster Impact Simulation System, which will be fully developed over the next 50 years, enabling many features currently not available but necessary for improving disaster impact analysis. The essential and crucial breakthroughs needed for and challenges of developing such a system are presented and discussed with the contributions from regional science research.