Mingji Cui (p), Hiroyuki Shibusawa

Ademir Rocha

The 2015 Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction which was adopted in the Third UN World Conference on DRR stated the global targets which were reduction of disaster mortality, number of affected people, and disaster economic loss related to the GDP by 2030. Moreover, the policy of "build back better" was proposed which states the importance of incorporating disaster experiences and lessons in the post-disaster recovery, rehabilitation, and reconstruction, to strengthen the disaster response capabilities and make nations and communities more resilient to disasters.
According to the report of the Cabinet Office, Government of Japan, the Nankai Trough Earthquake (M9) which is said to occur within the next 30 years with a 70-80% probability, will cause a lot of human damage, collapse of social infrastructure, and impacts in economic activities. In particular, many of the towns and villages in the Pacific coastal area which are assumed to be damaged by the tsunami in the Nankai Trough Earthquake, are facing a population crisis and will be cause for challenges in the recovery of regional vitality post-disaster. In predicting the economic impacts caused by a massive disaster in future, it is necessary to consider population changes in the socio-economic system.
A number of studies have been conducted to estimate the economic impact using input-output analysis or CGE models which can provide relatively accurate results. However, since many parameters need to be set for the models, high expertise is required. This study aims to develop an estimating model of economic damage using production function which is versatile and generally easy to understand, and which is applicable to various stakeholders in disaster prevention gaming and education programs. It considers the population change in Japan and takes into account assumptions about a potential future quake and measures based on the idea of "build back better", formulates the production function at the municipal level by dividing four regional economy sectors, and estimates the impacts of GRP (Gross Regional Product) to examine economic changes which have differences in regions and industrial structures, based on the damage and recovery scenario of Nankai Trough Earthquake.

Ann-Christine Link (p), Thomas Brenner, Bernd Schmeck

Mingji Cui

It is well studied that especially extreme weather and air characteristics, the latter including air quality and wind conditions, have an impact on the number of people hospitalized for pneumonia (Onozuka et al. 2009, Liu et al. 2014, Wang et al. 2021). Climate change itself is associated with both increases in the frequency and intensity of extreme weather events not only in the future but already nowadays. Therefore, it is important to understand the effect of extreme weather events on pneumonia cases and courses of disease more deeply. A special focus of this study is placed on how these effects interact with personal characteristics and other circumstances, such as air characteristics. This is important since research has so far overlooked these interactive influences on pneumonia cases.
We close this research gap by analysing data of patients who have been hospitalized for pneumonia from 40 European hospitals with a focus on German pneumonia patients. The dataset contains individual and health information for more than 10.000 patients. The patient data will be matched with daily weather and air data considering not only the day of hospitalization but also the conditions of previous days. Regional weather and air characteristics will be both spatially- and population-weighted to represent the catchment area of the hospitals. A logistic regression approach is applied to analyse the separate and, especially, the combined impacts of the various individual and regional variables on pneumonia events and their severity. Furthermore, various patient groups, such as female/male, age groups, and groups with different pre-existing illnesses are examined separately for identifying differences in the impact of weather and air characteristics on the aforementioned groups. This research is valuable since quantifying the relationship between weather events and pneumonia occurrences and the course of the disease helps hospitals to better prepare staff and treatment during periods of extreme weather and air characteristics.

Carlos Anguiano-santos (p), Melania Salazar-Ordóñez, Mercedes Luque-Vílchez

Ann-Christine Link

Concern for the environment has increased, which has generated an active demand from society on the actions of companies to control climate change and reduce impacts in the environment. In order to document and disclose this impacts, sustainability reporting (SR) is a useful tool since it facilitates the task of monitoring and evaluation of company actions. Over time, the disclosure of this sustainability information (non-financial information) has increased. However, there is still much to learn about SR, being the agri-food sector an environmentally-sensitive sector which presents an important gap in the literature.
The aim of this study is to measure the level of disclosure of sustainability information by companies in the Spanish, Italian and Dutch agri-food sector. For this purpose, a content analysis of SR of agri-food sector companies is performed, considering those companies that made their sustainability reports in some of the years 2018, 2019 and 2020 following the standards of the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) guidelines according to the requirements from the Spanish (Law 11/2018), Italian (Legislative Decree 254/2016) and Dutch (Decision of 14 March 2017) transpositions of the Directive 2014/95/EU. Therefore, the sample comprised 30 Spanish, 20 Italian and 20 Dutch companies, analysing 5 blocks of information (Environment, Social Local Communities, Employees, Human Rights, and Anticorruption and Bribery) where each indicator was assigned a value of 1 if it was found in the SR (0 otherwise), and then added and normalized to 100%.
The results show a low level of disclosure in all the countries; however, while Spain and Italy present a similar level and not very far from the middle point (42,1% and 38,8%, respectively), the Netherlands only reaches 14,9%. Consequently, none of the blocks makes a level over 50% of disclosure, except for the Social Local Communities and Employees blocks in Spain. This leads to a key issue about the level of sustainability information dissemination in the Spanish, Italian and Dutch agri-food companies since, although the number of SR has increased, not the quantity of information they give. This fact increases the danger of the so called "greenwashing" despite pressure from society. Therefore, companies should start to take care not only to disclose, as required by the Directive, but also to ensure that the information disclosed is complete and of high quality. To this end, developing a reference dissemination guide from public institutions could further improve the quantity and quality of information disseminated.

Ademir Rocha (p), Eduardo Haddad

Carlos Anguiano-santos

In the context of global climate change, one of the biggest challenges is water security. In Brazil, the prospect of water scarcity due to long-run climatic anomalies and the regional disparity between supply and demand for water resources point to limitations and risks to various economic and social activities. Given this scenario, analysis integrating climate change, water availability, and economic vulnerabilities is necessary to find and apply adequate adaptation and mitigation instruments. Considering the complexity of the problem, we built an Interregional Computable General Equilibrium (ICGE) model named Brazilian Multisectoral and Regional/Interregional Analysis Model with Water Module (BMARIA-H2O) composed of 67 economic sectors and 12 Brazilian hydrographic regions, all this integrated with hydroclimatic modelling. The results show a drop in real GDP driven by reducing government and household consumption and exports and increased imports. We conclude that the economic losses resulting from the effect of climate change on water availability are considerable and are equivalent to a reduction in GDP of BRL 12.3 billion (or US$ 5.2 billion) in the realistic scenario and BRL 29.7 billion (or US$ 12.5 billion) in the pessimistic scenario (year reference 2015). The low substitutability of water (small price elasticity of the water demand) in most user sectors turns price increases into direct shocks to the Brazilian economy. The simulations show that water-intensive sectors, such as water and sewage, forestry production, agriculture, and livestock are the main impacted by climate change.