An Introduction to the Natural Disaster Vulnerability Evaluation Modeling (NDVE-Modeling): Theory and Application

The natural disasters have a potentially large impact on economic growth but measuring their economic impact is subject to a great deal of uncertainty. The central objective of our paper is to set forth a model – the natural disasters vulnerability evaluation modeling (NDVE-Modeling) – to evaluate the impact of natural disasters on GDP growth. The model is based on three basic indicators - (i) the natural disasters vulnerability propensity rate (Ω); (ii) the natural disaster devastation magnitude rate (Π); and (iii) economic desgrowth rate (δ). We apply the NDVE-Modeling on different countries around the world and especially on the case of the Japanese Tsunami in March 2011.