For more than a century, nations have equipped themselves to provide weather, climate and hydrological information, forecasts and, more recently, remotely sensed data and early warnings to the public and private sectors.
... See More + These services, collectively referred to throughout this publication as met/hydro services, have increased the safety and efficiency of land, sea and air transport, helped communities prepare for and respond to extreme weather events, and facilitated improved decision-making in weather-sensitive economic sectors. Increasingly, it has become easier for people and businesses to access met/hydro information and products due to advances in the Internet and telecommunications. Met/hydro services do not generate economic and social value unless user’s benefit from decisions as a result of the information provided, even if the services are of the highest quality. In addition, met/hydro services of similar quality provided in two countries can vary significantly in terms of their benefits depending on the relative nature of weather- and climate-related risks, the number and types of users and their capacity to take actions to avoid harm or increase economic output. The generation of met/hydro services benefits can be depicted in a ‘value chain’ linking the production and delivery of services to user decisions and the outcomes and values resulting from those decisions are discussed in chapter two. Chapter three, provides the valuation study can be designed for the purpose of validating the current provision of individual or all met and hydro services, justifying new investments in those services, or demonstrating the value of met/hydro services in key sectors such as agriculture, aviation or energy. Chapter four provides a discussion of the process for planning, commissioning and conducting SEB studies. Chapters five to eight provide the reader with the essential economics material covering steps three to nine in the diagram. For readers not conversant with economics, chapter five provides an introduction to definitions and concepts needed to understand the discussions of benefits, costs and benefit, cost analysis (BCA) presented in chapters six, seven and eight. Chapter six provides an overview of the extensive variety of methods that have been used to assess the benefits of met and hydro services. The methods can be tailored to different users and benefit streams (avoided costs or damages, higher profits or increased social welfare). Some methods, particularly where more precise results are required, will involve extensive data collection, surveys of user preferences and willingness to pay (WTP) for services, or economic modelling, while other methods such as benchmarking and benefit transfer are reasonably inexpensive to apply. In collaboration with their SEB study implementers, NMHSs will need to select the benefits estimation method(s) most suitable to the services and types of users to be assessed, while accounting for resource and time constraints.
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