Economic justification of tsunami research: A specific example based on reduction of false alarms in Hawaii

Abstract

The most significant potential improvement to the Tsunami Warning System, at least as it affects Hawaii, and one of the more important practical justifications of tsunami research, is the reduction in false alarms. There are both immediate and deferred costs of tsunami false alarms. The immediate costs are the costs of responding to tsunami warnings, false or not. The deferred costs are the tsunami casualties resulting from failures to respond to subsequent warnings, insofar as these are attributable to the loss of public confidence in the warning system due to the false alarms. It is estimated that the Hawaiian response to a tsunami false alarm costs about $777,000, and that with present warning system policy the average annual costs of such responses is $264,000. Assigning values to human life and injury, it is estimated that the deferred costs of false alarms average about $42,000 per year, bringing the total annual costs to $306,000. An 80% reduction of these costs would justify an annual research expenditure of $307,000 per year for the next ten years.