Samenvatting

The economic analysis of (potential) disasters is an important method to determine the efficacy and efficiency of investments in disaster prevention and mitigation. The Dutch National Risk Assessment (NRA) provides an integrated, whole-of-government and all-hazard approach to Dutch national security. The strategy does not only intend to identify capacity gaps and define measures regarding individual threats and risks, but also to enhance capability planning and policy development concerning overall national security. The approach is multi-disciplinary and based upon scenarios which are evaluated and graded in terms of impact and likelihood according to a unified scoring method. Economic impact is one of the criteria in the NRA risk assessment methodology. This article provides a review of the (applied) scientific literature of the many economic tools and methods that have been used worldwide to estimate the (potential) impact of disasters and provides concrete applications at the micro and macro levels to Dutch cases and scenarios that were developed during the five annual cycles of the NRA's existence (2007-2011). We discuss pros and cons of applied methodologies.