自然灾害造成的损失：县级损害、伤害和死亡数据（英）

Matteo Crosignani and Martin HitiFederal Reserve Bank of New York Staff Reports, no.1156July2025https://doi.org/10.59576/sr.1156AbstractWe introduce the first comprehensive publicly available dataset on county-leveldamages, injuries, andfatalities from natural disasters in the U.S.and present a few facts on the economic and human costs ofextremeclimate events. Our source is the National Oceanic and AtmosphericAdministration’s StormEvents Database, which reports losses for geographicareas largely defined based on meteorologicalscience. We mapthese areas to counties using geographic tools together with the spatialdistribution ofpopulation, housing stock, and economic activity. Ourestimates are particularly accurate for severedisasters. TheLosses fromNatural Disasters datasetis regularly updated athttps://newyorkfed.org/research/policy/natural-disaster-losses.JEL classification:H12, H71, Q54Keywords:natural disasters, physical risk_________________Crosignani(corresponding author), Hiti: Federal Reserve Bank of New York (email:matteo.crosignani@ny.frb.org).The authors thank seminar participants at the New York Fed for theircomments.This paper presents preliminary findings and is being distributed to economists and other interestedreaders solely to stimulate discussion and elicit comments. The views expressed in this paper are those ofthe author(s) and do not necessarily reflect theposition of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York or theFederal Reserve System. Any errors or omissions are the responsibility of the author(s).To view the authors’ disclosure statements, visithttps://www.newyorkfed.org/research/staff_reports/sr1156.html. 1IntroductionNatural disasters generate substantial costs for households, firms, and governments. Busi-nesses monitor their exposure to physical risks, homeowners face rising insurance premiums,and the mounting costs of disaster response often strain public budgets. However, somewhatsurprisingly, empirical analyses of the economic and human costs of natural disasters arecurrently hindered by data limitations. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Adminis-tration (NOAA) collects official data on damages, injuries, and fatalities, but nearly 40% ofthese estimates are reported for meteorological “zones”—geographic units that might spanmany counties (e.g., a valley intersecting three counties) or include only parts of one (e.g., thecoastal portion of one county), making it difficult to merge losses from NOAA with standardadministrative datasets.In this paper, we introduceLosses from Natural Disasters—new and comprehensive dataon county-level damages, injuries, and fatalities from natural disasters in the U.S. from 1996to the present. Using geographic tools together with weighting schemes based on the spatialdistribution of population, housing stock, and economic activity, we apportion zone-leveldamages to counties (data users can choose the weighting scheme that best suits their empiricalanalysis).Losses from Natural Disastersprovides nominal and inflation-adjusted damages,injuries, and fatalities for each natural disaster reported by NOAA. Our county-level estimatesare particularly accurate for severe disasters and can be easily aggregated to different levels,such as county-month, county-month-disaster type, state-year, and so on. Finally, we use ourdata to discuss three facts on the economic and human costs of natural disasters.Lossesfrom Natural Disasters is publicly available and regularly updated atnewyorkfed.org/research/policy/natural-disaster-losses. This webpage also includes interac-tive maps, FAQs, data dictionaries, and other details about the dataset. Figure 1 shows aheat map of total county-level damages from floods, hurricanes/tropical storms, and coastaldisasters (top panel) and wildfires (bottom panel) between 1996 and 2023 using our data.1Coastal disasters are astronomical low tide, coastal flooding, high surf, rip current, and storm surge/tide. 12 These maps, obtained using population-based weights, document that Florida, the Southeast,and parts of the East Coast have suffered the most from flooding, hurricanes, and coastaldisasters, while the West has been particularly affected by wildfires.Our main data source is the Storm Events Database (SED), an official NOAA publication.The SED records significant or unusual weather phenomena that are collected in a nationaldatabase by the National Weather Service (NWS) and classified into over 55 types of weatherevents since 1996 (we further group disaster types into 13 broader categories). The SEDreports (i) direct property damages, (ii) crop damages, and (iii) direct and indirect fatalitiesand injuries. As anticipated, the location of each event is either a county or a zone, wherethe NWS uses zones to allow for more accurate forecasts due to “such things as elevation orproximity to large bodies of water.”Our methodology to map all events to counties is based on three steps. First, we usehistorical maps to identify which count