Residual Risk Accounting: A Pilot Study of the Coastal Sector

Risks continue near the coasts such as flooding, oil spills, deaths and unemployment despite numerous policies to prevent and mitigate their effects. Such policies are typically analyzed in their natural units, such as jobs, and so comparisons are difficult across risk categories. An approach similar to supplemental national income and product accounting allows direct comparison of the relative importance and variability of these residual risks. Results for the coastal sector highlight the stability and large expected annual costs associated with some activities such as recreational boating fatalities. In contrast, other categories such as oil spills and flooding exhibit high variability and in the case of flooding, a high level of damages. The results are useful in the strategic development of regulations, causal models and policy design.