Stakeholder-Based Tool for the Analysis of Regional Risk

Abstract

This paper presents the Stakeholder-Based Tool for the Analysis of Regional Risk (STARR), a dynamic, stochastic computational framework designed to inform the creation and analysis of government policies for regional disaster risk management. STARR consists of seven interacting modules. Three describe the decision-making of, respectively, government agencies, insurers, and households; four (hazard, damage and loss, buildings, economy) describe the natural, built, and economic environments in which those decisions are made. The tool is intended to (1) support policymaking by facilitating development, evaluation, and comparison of possible disaster risk management policies; (2) facilitate understanding of the dynamic system of regional disaster risk management, including interactions among stakeholder actions and the effects of changes in the context or assumptions; and (3) guide future research in a way that tightly integrates social science, physical science, and engineering contributions, demonstrating the interrelation among research advances, building on previous research, and identifying lingering gaps in knowledge. Just as regional loss estimation or catastrophe (cat) models have guided a generation of disaster risk analysis research, by extending such loss models to be dynamic and to include stakeholder decision-making modules, the STARR framework can facilitate future disaster research and practice in a way that acknowledges the decision-making required to make real change and thus overcomes some of the barriers preventing implementation of risk reduction strategies in the real world. Although it is possible to extend the framework to consider other hazards and stakeholders, STARR currently focuses on hurricanes and on households and housing.