Land use and land cover play weak roles in typhoon economic losses at the county level

Abstract

Many empirical typhoon economic loss models consider that the losses caused by typhoons mainly depend on the intensity of the hazards and the exposure in the affected areas. Few studies have attracted attention to the role of disaster-formative environmental factors in typhoon losses. In this study, we chose land use and land cover (LULC) as disaster-formative environmental factors together with typhoon wind speed, rainfall, and gross domestic product (GDP) as predictive factors for typhoon economic losses in Guangdong Province, China. The results showed that the intensity of wind speed was the most important factor, while LULC played weak roles in typhoon economic losses for 23 typical typhoons in terms of county level losses in Guangdong. Subregionally, typhoon economic loss models performed better in coastal areas than in noncoastal areas.