Expanded disaster risk assessment using agent-based modeling: a case study on floods in Sri Lanka

Standard disaster risk assessments use asset losses to measure severity. This chapter adds socioeconomic resilience and welfare losses to the conventional approach. This expanded risk assessment provides new insights into differential disaster risks by considering household recovery dynamics. In application to Sri Lanka, we find that regular flooding is a major source of transient poverty. Average annual wellbeing losses due to fluvial flooding are estimated at US$119 million per year, more than double the asset losses of US$78 million. The bottom income quintile suffers just 7 percent of these asset losses, but 32 percent of wellbeing losses. Asset losses are reported to be highly concentrated in Colombo district, and wellbeing losses are more widely distributed throughout the country. In most districts, the Sinhalese majority is found to have higher socioeconomic resilience than minority households.