Cost of Natural Hazards in Italy

In Italy, naural hazards cause significant societal and economic damages. Despite the frequent losses, Italy does not have rigorous strategies and methods for a through evaluation of the costs of natural disasters. In particular, Italy lacks sound economic estimates of damage due to earthquakes, landslides, and floods. Most of the available estimates are limited to the cost components of the public budget post-event restorations and reimbursements, and do not account for to the total economic costs. The project, financed by the Fondazione Generali and lead by Prof. Roberto Zoboli, aims to address the lack of economic knowledge on natural disasters in Italy by developing analyses to assess the economic estimates of natural disasters, with specific reference to Italy. The research hypothesis is that the general socio-economic cost of disasters in Italy is underestimated. The main objective of the project is to examine four levels of cost evaluation: (i) an advance in the ex-post analysis for the quantification of the total private and public costs of natural disasters occurred in Italy, based on rigorous economic criteria; (ii) based on an ex-ante analysis, aimed to the evaluation of the economic and social risk, which represents a further step to quantify technical-scientific risk assessment; (iii) an economic evaluation of prevention/mitigation policies, whether they are based on structural measures or, on more complex and interesting non-structural measures; and (iv) an investigation of the possible role of insurance schemes, in close connection with prevention/mitigation investments, as part of a national strategy for natural disasters.