Disaster Relief Funding

What is Disaster Relief Funding And How Can We Quantify It?

Disaster relief funding has become a priority since the increase in frequency and intensity of natural disasters due to climate change. Extreme weather events, like hurricanes, floods, wildfires, and more, resources can be drained, increasing the need for financial assistance in communities that need help. Disaster relief funding includes direct costs of natural disasters as well as indirect economic costs.

Direct costs:

• Emergency Responses
• Rebuilding Infrastructure
• Recovery Efforts

Indirect costs:

• Business interruptions
• Supply Chain Interruptions
• Healthcare Expenses

Disaster Relief Funds

There's a number of different funding sources from different bureau's/offices. Here are some notable ones:

• Acquisition, construction, and improvements
• Laboratory facilities
• Domestic investigations
• Disaster relief fund
• Operations research and facilities
• Military funding
• Training and employment services
• Grants, expenses, and salaries
• Equipment
• Emergency response
• Engineering and operations
• Natural resource conservation services
• Health administrations

Looking at these and more, we can create a funds dataset over the years.

Sandy Hurricane Case

A specific case we can observe is the Sandy Hurricane Funds between the March and September of 2015, when the hurricane had its impact.

Sandy Hurricane Funds Data

Month	Funds Awarded (Obligations)	Funds Paid Out (Outlays)
March	$25,850,213,089	$14,721,358,275
June	$31,448,683,015	$15,999,318,496
September	$34,017,448,870	$17,499,936,578

We can also analyze this data to draw that the Funds Paid Out is always much less than, almost half of the Funds Awarded. This means that these funds could be put to better use, helping with relocation or more climate mitigation strategies.

Strategically allocating resources and ensuring effective responses to climate change-related natural disasters can help accurately quantify disaster relief funding. Governments and other organizations can collaborate to address these urgent needs and build more resilient communities for the future.

References

FEMA