@article {bnh-6168, title = {Valuing non-market economic impacts from natural hazards}, journal = {Natural Hazards}, volume = {99}, year = {2019}, month = {08/2019}, pages = {1131-1161}, abstract = {

Prioritising investments to minimise or mitigate natural hazards such as wildfires and storms is of increasing importance to hazard managers. Prioritisation of this type can be strengthened by considering benefit and cost impacts. To evaluate benefits and costs, managers require an understanding of both the tangible economic benefits and costs of mitigation decisions, and the often intangible values associated with environmental, social and health-related outcomes. We review the state of non-market valuation studies that provide monetary equivalent estimates for the intangible benefits and costs that can be affected by natural hazard events or their mitigation. We discuss whether managers can usefully call upon these available estimates, with a view to using the benefit transfer approach to include non-market values in economic decision frameworks. Additional context-specific non-market valuation studies are required to provide a more accurate selection of value estimates for natural hazard decision making. Decision making would benefit from considering these values explicitly in prioritising natural hazard investments.

}, keywords = {Non-market values; Intangible values; Willingness to pay; Natural hazard mitigation; Prioritising investments}, doi = {https://doi.org/10.1007/s11069-019-03761-7}, url = {https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11069-019-03761-7}, author = {Abbie Rogers and Fiona Dempster and Jacob Hawkins and Robert Johnston and Peter Boxall and John Rolfe and Marit Kragt and Michael Burton and David J Pannell} } @article {bnh-5650, title = {Where to prescribe burn: the costs and benefits of prescribed burning close to houses}, journal = {International Journal of Wildland Fire}, year = {2019}, month = {06/2019}, abstract = {

Prescribed burning is used in Australia as a tool to manage fire risk and protect assets. A key challenge is deciding how to arrange the burns to generate the highest benefits to society. Studies have shown that prescribed burning in the wildland{\textendash}urban interface (WUI) can reduce the risk of house loss due to wildfires, but the costs and benefits of different arrangements for prescribed burning treatments have rarely been estimated. In this study, we use three different models to explore the costs and benefits of modifying the spatial arrangement of prescribed burns on public land, using the south-west of Western Australia as a case study. We simulate two hypothetical scenarios: landscape treatments and WUI treatments. We evaluate the long-term costs and benefits of each scenario and compare the results from the three models, highlighting the management implications of each model. Results indicate that intensifying prescribed burning treatments in public land in the WUI achieves a greater reduction in damages compared with applying the majority of the treatments in rural areas. However, prescribed burning in the WUI is significantly more expensive and, despite additional benefits gained from this strategy, in most cases it is not the most economically efficient strategy.

}, keywords = {benefit-cost analysis, fire management, fuel treatment, house loss, Prescribed burning, preventative mitigation, risk, trade-off, wildland fire economics, Wildland-urban interface}, doi = {https://doi.org/10.1071/WF18192}, url = {http://www.publish.csiro.au/WF/WF18192}, author = {Veronique Florec and Michael Burton and David J Pannell and Joel Kelso and George J. Milne} } @article {bnh-8039, title = {Value Tool for Natural Hazards: Guidelines}, number = {361.2018}, year = {2018}, month = {06/2018}, institution = {Bushfire and Natural Hazards CRC}, address = {MELBOURNE}, abstract = {

The {\textquotedblleft}Value Tool for Natural Hazards{\textquotedblright} comprises of a Value Tool Database, which provides a collection of non-market value estimates relevant to natural hazards, and these Value Tool Guidelines, which describe how to use the values collated in the Database. The purpose of the Value Tool is to provide an accessible list of non-market value estimates for policy makers to use in decision making about natural hazard management.

The non-market or intangible benefits and costs of natural hazards are large in many cases, and should be accounted for in prioritising investment in natural hazard mitigation. We recommend that non-market values should be considered in natural hazard decision making as follows:

The Guidelines provide an overview of non-market values and benefit transfer for natural hazard decision making as follows:\ 

The Value Tool Database and Guidelines provide guidance on how the non-market value estimates should be used, and the policy contexts under which they are best suited for use. We recognise that the non-market valuation literature is incomplete with respect to providing highly accurate value estimates for all of the value types that might be affected by a natural hazard (see Section 3). However, we advocate that the use of an approximate number is usually better than no number, when it comes to decision making. It is better to have some information about the intangible benefits of a decision, than to ignore them completely: the error, and decision bias, resulting from the latter is likely to be far greater than the error from using an inaccurate number.

Provided the policy maker is aware of the potential for this error, uses a conservative approach for transferring values, and undertakes appropriate sensitivity analysis in analyses that use those values, then the values can provide useful, quantitative information for decision making. As noted above, in some cases, where a value transfer is too unreliable, we don{\textquoteright}t recommend using the values in a quantitative analysis, but suggest using them in a qualitative manner to inform thinking about particular policies.

}, keywords = {guidelines, hazards, natural, tool, Value}, issn = {361}, author = {Abbie Rogers and Fiona L Gibson and Peter Boxall and Michael Burton and Jacob Hawkins and Robert Johnston and Marit Kragt and John Rolfe and David J Pannell} } @article {bnh-4116, title = {Non-market valuation in the economic analysis of natural hazards}, number = {1604}, year = {2016}, month = {05/2016}, institution = {School of Agricultural and Resource Economics, Unviersity of Western Australia}, type = {Working Paper}, address = {Crawley}, abstract = {

Natural hazards have a wide range of impacts, including on factors that are normally unpriced because they are not bought and sold in markets. Key examples include impacts on human health, the environment, ecosystem services and other outcomes relevant to social welfare. Economists seek to quantify these impacts in financial-equivalent terms in order to be able to compare them with market impacts and include them in Benefit: Cost Analysis (BCA) of policies and strategies to mitigate risks. Estimating these so-called non-market values can be difficult. This paper reviews the methods available for doing so, presents a comprehensive list of the non-market values that might be affected by natural hazards and reviews the existing literature that estimates non-market values relevant to natural hazards. We find that there are few applications specifically in a natural hazard context. We conclude with a discussion on the limitations of non-market valuation in the natural hazard context.

}, issn = {1604}, url = {http://ageconsearch.umn.edu/record/236941}, author = {Fiona L Gibson and David J Pannell and Peter Boxall and Michael Burton and Robert Johnston and Marit Kragt and Abbie Rogers and John Rolfe} } @conference {bnh-2950, title = {Think long term: the costs and benefits of prescribed burning in the south west of Western Australia}, booktitle = {AFAC16}, year = {2016}, month = {08/2016}, publisher = {Bushfire and Natural Hazards CRC}, organization = {Bushfire and Natural Hazards CRC}, address = {Brisbane}, abstract = {

Wildfires are a worldwide phenomenon that can cause significant damage to ecosystems, life and property (Gill 2005; Bowman et al. 2009). Every year in Australia large, uncontrolled fires burn in a variety of landscapes destroying economic, environmental and social assets (Williams et al. 2011). But wildfires are also a natural, inevitable and vital element of the Australian environment that cannot (and should not) be eliminated (Pyne et al. 1996; Pyne 2006). Hence fire management must be an integral part of land and ecosystem management (Bradstock et al. 2012b; Burrows and McCaw 2013).


In recent years, the frequency and severity of large wildfires have increased in most of the vegetated landscapes around the world (Bowman et al. 2009), including Australia. For instance, the fires of Black Saturday on February 2009 caused the highest loss of life and property from a wildfire in Australian history (Teague et al. 2010). The total cost of the Black Saturday fires was estimated to be AU$4.2 billion (Attiwill and Adams 2013). These large fires and losses occur despite advances in fire-fighting technology, greater suppression capacity, considerable suppression efforts, and record expenditures in wildfire suppression (Toman et al. 2011; Attiwill and Adams 2013).

}, author = {Veronique Florec and David J Pannell and Michael Burton and Joel Kelso and George J. Milne} } @article {bnh-1803, title = {Economic Analysis of Bushfire Management Programs: A WA Perspective Report}, year = {2013}, abstract = {

Bushfires can cause considerable damage to ecosystems, life and property. Protecting human and environmental assets is becoming more difficult as the wildland{\textendash}urban interface expands in Australia. Fire managers can plan for and manage bushfire events to a greater extent than other large natural disturbances such as cyclones and earthquakes. However, fire strategies that have sought to respond to the increasing bushfire threat with greater suppression capacity do not appear to solve the problem of catastrophic bushfires. Although suppression capacity and the use of technology in bushfire management have greatly increased, the frequency of disastrous fires appears to follow an increasing trend.

Improved understanding and comprehensive appraisals of bushfire costs and benefits are needed in order to devise fire mitigation and management programs that optimally allocate resources and express informed, evidence-based judgements about trade-offs between available options. The aim of this project is to provide a comprehensive economic evaluation of alternative fire management programs in Western Australia in order to determine the optimal allocation of scarce resources for bushfire management.

In this paper we present our initial investigations into the application of the cost plus net value change (C+NVC) model to bushfire management programs in Western Australia.

}, isbn = {978-0-9806759-6-2}, author = {Veronique Florec and David J Pannell and Michael Burton and Joel Kelso and Andrew Mellor and George J. Milne} }