After a storm has rolled through an area, news reports will often be filled with speculation on the costs of damages, which can vary hugely depending on the source and what scope is included. For something like recent Hurricane Ian, early estimates offer a wide range, from a low of $42 billion, up to a high of $258 billion, but these values are almost always limited to property damage, and exclude other considerations like lost economic activity from business interruptions or the much harder to quality costs of lives lost, according to an article in The Conversation.
As for the assembly of these estimates, they often come from an assortment of sources, beginning with inputs from the insurance industry, considering insured properties first, and extrapolating to uninsured once. Additional inputs for damage to infrastructure are also assembled from sources like satellite and other aerial imagery, with the results of both being fed in to estimate effects on employment in affected areas. Further considerations related to the disruptive effects on areas outside the border of the disaster, the speed with which businesses can reopen, and the long-term displacement of people from the affected region, all also feed into the true costs.
The distribution of these costs of damage are also a point of interest for these estimates, with the greatest burden typically falling on lower-income communities, which are often located in areas more prone to disaster, and with less resources to help with both preparation for and recovery from disasters.
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