Abstract:
Normalized hurricane damage can be used to assess the risk of damaging hurricane seasons. Weinkle and colleagues use an economy-wide price deflator to produce normalized damage estimates that suggest that losses from the 2017 hurricane season are likely to be seen again in the future. I argue that a building cost deflator is more relevant for hurricane damage. I find that normalized damage estimates that account for changes in building costs are consistent with historical trends in hurricane landfalls and indicate that there is an even higher probability of extremely damaging hurricane seasons in the future.
Citation:
Martinez, A.B. (2020). 'Improving Normalized Hurricane Damages'. Nature Sustainability, Vol 3, pp.517–518.