Quantitative Analysis of the Impact of Floods in Bolivia
Bolivia’s primary natural hazards - such as droughts, frost, severe rains, and hailstorms - are largely hydrometeorological in nature, and include phenomena derived from these, such as floods and landslides. Given their frequency and the proportion...
| Main Authors: | , , , , , , |
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| Language: | English |
| Published: |
World Bank, Washington, DC
2017
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| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: | http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/111981513149194767/Quantitative-analysis-of-the-impact-of-floods-in-Bolivia http://hdl.handle.net/10986/29043 |
| Summary: | Bolivia’s primary natural hazards - such
as droughts, frost, severe rains, and hailstorms - are
largely hydrometeorological in nature, and include phenomena
derived from these, such as floods and landslides. Given
their frequency and the proportion of the population exposed
to them, floods cause significant economic losses primarily
affecting infrastructure, agricultural, and livestock
production. Given this context, disaster risk management has
been a priority in the agenda of the Government of Bolivia,
which has achieved significant progress in establishing a
regulatory and institutional framework for this purpose.
This study analyzes various indexes commonly used in
economic literature to represent flood impacts. The results
show that different indexes are consistent across the
different characterizations, and point to a significant
negative effect of excessive precipitation, intense
rainfall, and river overflow, on both per capita income and
household poverty. The study is divided into four sections.
The first section describes the three indexes used in the
study, the information used to calibrate them, and how their
values are calculated. The second section describes the
methodology used to assess floods imparts on household
income and poverty. The third section describes the results
for different variants of the indexes and includes a
comparison of the predictions of each in different
scenarios. The last section shows the main conclusions of
the study. |
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