Forecasting the conditional probabilities of natural disasters in Canada as a guide for disaster preparedness

摘要

A variety of natural disasters occur in Canada. Yet apart from simple "return period" calculations, no apparent research seems to have made systematic use of the OCIPEP database on all natural disasters in Canada over the period of 1900 to 2000. Thispaper (a) describes the main characteristics of natural disasters in Canada, and (b) presents a methodology that is a first attempt to use the database to forecast conditional probabilities of each type of natural disaster. The forecast probabilities can then be used to work out the expected social costs of each type of natural disaster. The expected costs in turn suggest what kind of policy priorities are indicated for disaster preparedness. The key results of this methodology are that Hydrometeorological Disasters are increasing over time and of these, the ranking in order of priority for preparedness should be droughts, heat waves, floods and ice storms.