Comparison of damage values used in different flood modeling studies

Abstract

Estimating the economic loss caused by a flood hazard plays a major role in decision making during disaster risk reduction activities, and such studies have been carried over some major cities of the world. This paper compares the base economic values used for building and infrastructure, depth-damage curves used and the total economic loss caused by flood hazards in five such studies carried out in Colombo, Jakarta, Manila, Bangkok and Ginosa. These original studies had the data on different formats which were adopted to this study by means of normalization. The building structural damage and the contents damage of residential, commercial and industrial building types were focused on, since the largest contributions to the direct damage arises from these categories and building types. The comparisons have shown the importance of having disaggregated building economic information for commercial and industrial buildings with similar damage curves for the same building category. Furthermore, the importance of choosing a conservative depth for flood studies is stressed. The maximum inundation depth for the studies vary from 1.8 m to 10.0 m; and the lower values may produce errors in quantifying economic losses for floods with higher return periods.