ASSESSMENT ON INDIRECT ECONOMIC LOSS OF WENCHUAN EARTHQUAKE DISASTER BASED ON INPUT-OUTPUT ANALYSIS

The scientific and reasonable assessment of disaster loss is the basic work for disaster relief and post-disaster reconstruction.Indirect economic loss is also an important part of scientific assessment for disaster influence.Taking the stricken area of 2008 Wenchuan earthquake in Sichuan as an example,this paper preliminarily analyzed the sections-related indirect economic loss resulting from Wenchuan earthquake by the methods of input-output analysis.The results show that,1) the sections-related indirect economic loss of Wenchuan earthquake reached up to 2 545.32 billion Yuan,which is as much as 3 times the direct economic loss in Sichuan Province.The direct economic loss does not evaluate the effects of Wenchuan earthquake disaster completely,and the indirect economic loss is an inseparable part for the systematic assessment of disaster influence.2) The characteristics of economic losses are not the same among different sectors in Sichuan.The indirect economic losses of industry and other services are the biggest in all sectors of Sichuan.However,the ratios of indirect and direct economic loss in industry,agriculture,construction are the highest,which is over 14.60,8.70 and 7.11,respectively.3) Although the uncertainty exists in the assessment result due to the limitation of input-output model,input-output analysis is still the most wildly used method to assess the indirect economic loss of natural hazard.Furthermore,the data accuracy is also an important factor influencing the economic loss assessment of natural hazard.