Quantitative Evaluation of Flood Control Measures and Educational Support to Reduce Disaster Vulnerability of the Poor Based on Household-level Savings Estimates

In developing countries, where budget constraints make it difficult to invest in disaster risk reduction, disasters worsen the poverty trap. To alleviate poverty by reducing the risk of disasters, not only the immediate direct impacts of disasters but also their long-term and indirect impacts should be considered. However, since the effects of individual policies are often evaluated based on the extent of damage reduction, the impact on the poor, who have few assets and thus small losses, is generally ignored. Here, we aimed to quantitatively evaluate the effects of flood control measures and educational support in terms of the flood vulnerability of the poor at the household level. We constructed a model to calculate the savings of individual households and used the flood damage-to-savings ratio to determine their flood vulnerability. Next, we estimated the extent to which the flood vulnerability is reduced by various policies. We found that educational support is suitable for reducing the flood vulnerability of the poor cost-effectively, especially when the budgets are small. Gini coefficient predictions confirmed that educational support is effective in reducing income inequality. The novelty of this study is that it quantitatively links flood damage, savings, and education, which are factors that affect the flood vulnerability of the poor, and it compares the effects of various flood control measures and educational support at the household level in terms of the flood vulnerability. While the model was developed using household survey data from Bago, Myanmar, the framework should be applicable to other regions as well.