Data Science Day @ Columbia University

This project combines natural science data with social science data, applying an interdisciplinary approach to investigate the long-term economic impacts of earthquakes. USGS ShakeMap data is used to provide a measure for the exogenous natural hazard of earthquakes in terms of peak ground acceleration. In the past, social science research has predominantly employed inadequate measures for the natural hazard of earthquakes. Here, a data set that represents global relevant ground shaking since 1973 is constructed and used for the first time to analyze global economic impacts. This data set is combined with social productivity data on two different geographic levels. First, conventional country-level World Bank GDP data is considered and then compared with an approach that looks at a 1x1 degree grid level, by using gridded G-Econ output data. Different regression models are applied for the quantitative analysis with particular focus on the spatial nature of the data.