Post Date:
Wednesday, July 20, 2016
Seminar Announcement
Join CREATE’s Dr. Adam Rose for a NOAA seminar: Economic Consequence Analysis Tool (E-CAT) for Natural Disasters.
Thursday, July 21st, 2016
1:30 PM – 3:00 PM
For remote access: Audio: Dial toll-free US 1-866-833-7307, participant code is 8986360#. Webcast at www.mymeetings.com.
Under “Participant Join", click “Join an Event", then add conf no: 742656968. Passcode is brownbag. Be sure to install the correct plug-in (or run the plug-in as a temporary application) for WebEx before the seminar starts.
During the presentation, please mute your phone by pressing *6.
Background
The Economic Consequences Analysis Tool (E-CAT) is intended for policymakers and analysts who need rapid estimates of the economic impacts of natural disasters, technological accidents, and terrorist attacks. It is programmed in Excel and Visual Basic to facilitate its use. This presentation will explain the E-CAT framework, its theoretical and empirical underpinnings, and illustrate its derivation and use for the cases of an oil spill and a flood disaster.
E-CAT is the culmination of 10 years of research at the Center for Risk and Economic Analysis of Terrorism Events (CREATE) in advancing Economic Consequence Analysis (ECA) by incorporating resilience and behavioral responses to a broad range of threats. The theme of this research has been integrating broader features of consequences into the state-of-the- art tool of macroeconomic simulation and policy analysis — computable general equilibrium (CGE) modeling. The essence of the methodology involves running numerous CGE simulations that yield synthetic data for regression equations for each threat based on the identification of key explanatory variables, including threat characteristics and background conditions. This transforms the results of a complex model, which is beyond the reach of most users, into a “reduced form” model that is readily comprehensible. We have built functionality into E-CAT such that users can switch various impact “drivers” on and off in order to generate customized profiles of economic consequences of numerous disaster events.
E-CAT involves a 7-step process beginning with the enumeration of a broad range of potential impacts for each threat, quanti- fication of direct impact drivers, linkage of these drivers to variables in a national CGE model, running the CGE model hun- dreds of times while varying key parameters particular to each threat, generating regression estimates from the CGE simulation results, incorporating uncertainty, and transporting the reduced-form regression results to a user-friendly spreadsheet program.
E-CAT can meet policy-makers’ needs for a tool to evaluate the magnitude of various threats in order to make decisions on how to allocate budgets across interdiction, mitigation and resilience options. E-CAT can also be used to provide rapid estimates of recent events that require immediate disaster assistance. A book on E-CAT will be available from Springer Publishers in autumn of this year.
About Dr. Rose
Dr. Adam Rose is a Research Professor in the University of Southern California (USC) Sol Price School of Public Policy, and a faculty affiliate of USC’s Center for Risk and Economic Analysis of Terrorism Events (CREATE). His primary research interest is the economics of disasters, including natural hazards, terrorism and technological accidents. He has spearheaded the development of CREATE’s comprehensive economic consequence analysis framework and has done pioneering research on resilience at the level of the individual business/household, market/industry and regional/national economy. He has also completed dozens of case studies of disaster consequences and recovery, including the September 11 terrorist attacks. He is currently the PI on an NSF grant
to study dynamic economic resilience to disasters, with an application to SuperStorm Sandy, and on a contract for FEMA with formulate a deductible for post-disaster assistance. He is also the project leader of the Economic Consequence Analysis Working Group on Maritime Cyber Security. He recently served as an advisor on disaster resilience to the United Nations Development Programme
and to the World Bank on financing disaster risk management. He was the research team leader on the Multi-Hazard Mitigation Council report to the U.S. Congress on net benefits of FEMA hazard mitigation grants. His other major research area is the economics of energy and climate change policy, where he has done extensive work on international burden sharing and on the economic impacts of state-level climate action plans in the U.S.
Professor Rose is the author of several books and 200 professional papers, including most recently The Economics of Climate Change Policy (Elgar) and Economic Consequence Analysis Tool (Springer). He has been appointed to the editorial boards of Environmental Hazards, Journal of Integrated Disaster Risk Management, International Journal of Disaster Risk Science, The Energy Journal, Resource and Energy Economics, Energy Policy, Pacific and Asian Journal of Energy, Journal of Sustainable Energy Engineering, Resource Policy, and Journal of Regional Science.
Professor Rose has served as the American Economic Association Representative to the American Association for the Advancement of Science, a member of the Board of Directors of the National Institute of Building Sciences Multi-Hazard Mitigation Council and a member of the Advisory Board of the Center for National Policy Resilience Forum. He is the recipient of a Woodrow Wilson Fellowship, East-West Center Fellowship, International Society for Integrated Disaster Risk Management Outstanding Research Award, American Planning Association Outstanding Program Planning Honor Award, Applied Technology Council Outstanding Achievement Award, Regional Economic Models Outstanding Economic Analysis Award, and DHS/CREATE Transition Product of the Year Award.
Co-Authors: Zhenhua Chen (University of Southern California), Fynn Prager (California State University, Dominguez Hills) and Sam Chatterjee (Pacific Northwest National Laboratory)