MEASURING POLICY BENEFITS OF THE CYCLONE SHELTER PROGRAM IN THE NORTH INDIAN OCEAN: PROTECTION FROM INTENSE WINDS OR HIGH STORM SURGES?

This paper provides a quantitative estimate of the policy benefit of the cyclone shelter program (CSP) implemented in Bangladesh. The present author examines all cyclones that were generated in the North Indian Ocean, both the Bay of Bengal and the Arabian Sea, from 1990 to 2015. A negative binomial (NB) model of cyclone fatalities against cyclone intensity finds that the CSP does little in protecting people's lives against the high storm intensity. In contrast, a two-stage NB model of cyclone fatalities against the level of surges reveals that the CSP is vastly effective against storm surges. The number of fatalities is, on average, 75% smaller in the areas where the shelter program has been implemented against the areas without the program in response to the same level of storm surges. A set of Probit adoption models of adaptation options in response to cyclone surges and intensity reveals that the CSP has been directed to a low-income area with high population density, which is in contrast to the other strategies which have been increasingly adopted with higher income, e.g., cyclone trajectory projection technologies.