Post-disaster needs assessments guidelines: Volume B - Macroeconomic Impact of Disasters

The following section of the PDNA Handbook describes the manner in which macroeconomic disaster impact may be estimated on the basis of a quantification of the destruction of assets and disruption of socio-economic activities caused by disasters of any kind and origin. A separate section describing the methodology to estimate disaster impact on human development will be added later. In turn, the estimation of disaster impact leads to the subsequent estimation of the financial requirements or needs to achieve post-disaster economic recovery and disaster-resilient reconstruction. It may not be necessarily evident to the reader that in order to estimate overall disaster impact at both macroeconomic and human development levels, it is essential that post-disaster assessments be conducted on a sectoral fashion, covering all institutional social and economic sectors of activity that are regularly measured in each country of the world, and using a standard assessment methodology to enable a valid aggregation of sectoral results to obtain the overall view of disaster impact for the entire affected country or area. Furthermore, it is essential for the reader and user of the PDNA Guidelines to understand that the quantitative estimation of disaster impact must be evidence-based in order to satisfy the normal reliability requirements of the agency or agencies that are to provide the required financial resources to achieve recovery and reconstruction after a disaster, be they of national or international scope.

At the national level, this task will likely fall within the purview of the Ministry of Finance and of Economic Development Planning, while any of numerous international organisations and friendly donor government organisations may decide on the type and quantity of post-disaster assistance and financing to be provided.

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