Evaluation of Flood Losses and Benefits

The analysis of the damages, including the annual flood loss, constitutes the outstanding problem of the economics of flood control in which benefits must be weighed against costs. It is the purpose of this paper to present some methods that have been used by the writer in the U.S. Engineer Department. The primary condition imposed is that the method must be based on sound principles of mathematics, hydrology, and economics. In order to demonstrate that this condition was met, the paper contains a brief description of the various types of damage, some fundamental concepts of economics, a discussion of frequency and damage curves, and an example of the computation of the annual loss.