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Population Health and Economic Costs of Severe Weather Events
Storms and other severe weather events can cause both public health and economic problems for communities and municipalities. Many severe events can result in fatalities, injuries, and property damage, and preventing such outcomes to the extent possible is a key concern.
Using the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s (NOAA) storm database (which tracks characteristics from major storms and weather events including when and where they occur as well as estimates any fatalities, injuries, and property damage), I evaluate which storm event are the most harmful to population health and have the greatest economic consequences. The former is operationalized as the sum of fatalities and injuries while the latter is operationalized as the sum of property and crop damage estimates. In short, these analyses find that tornadoes have caused cause the highest levels of population health harms and floods have caused the highest economic costs.