Flood footprint assessment: a new approach for flood-induced indirect economic impact measurement and post-flood recovery

Flooding in one location can impact the entire production chain of a regional economy. Neglecting the knock-on costs of this risks ignoring the economic benefits and beneficiaries of flood risk management interventions. However, economic consequence assessments in the existing studies are restricted to direct economic impact as there is not a generally accepted quantitative method to assess indirect economic impacts. This paper presents the full methodology for a novel flood footprint accounting framework – the Flood Footprint Model – to assess the indirect economic impact of a flood event and simulate post-flood economic recovery situations throughout productions supply chains. Within the framework of Input-Output (IO) analysis, the model is built upon previous contributions, with improvements regarding the optimization of available production imbalances; the requirements for recovering damaged capital; and an optimized rationing scheme, including basic demand and reconstruction requirements. The Flood Footprint Model will be applied in a hypothetical example with an extensive sensitivity analysis of the Flood Footprint Model performed, taking particular account of alternative labour and capital recovery paths.