Rapid Assessment for Resilient Recovery and ... - GFDRR

Damage for Natural Heritage Sub-Sector
Information about the various national parks in the affected provinces, all under the Ministry
of Natural Resources and Environment, was provided directly and collected through
the ministry’s website. Six wild life reserves and 15 national parks in the affected areas are
located in the assessed provinces. These parks are about 200m above sea level, which
ensured their preservation from the floods. In one instance, flash floods affected small
infrastructure (small bridges over streams). These are the only affected structures related
to natural heritage.
Losses
Estimated Losses for Tangible Heritage 126
The loss estimates for FAD assets are divided into two different categories. One deals with
losses directly linked with the structures, emergency prevention and protection measures,
costs incurred by the management to deal with the situation, as well as costs related to
relocation of goods and objects of cultural value within the buildings, including the costs of
providing adequate conservation or protection systems. These are qualified as “structural
losses”. The second type deals with losses of income due to temporary closing, cancellation
of scheduled exhibitions and activities, or loss of income due to the reduced number of
visitors. The duration of the restoration and reconstruction period greatly impacts the scale
of losses.
The calculation of the structural losses was produced in a similar manner to that of the
damage, except that it did not seem appropriate to determine a separate value per m2
for compounds and constructions, due to the nature of the structures’ losses. Instead a
value for the overall size of the compound was estimated. Structural losses for heritage
structures and sites are mainly the cost of prevention measures, water control measures,
dikes and sand bags, pumps and other equipment, as well as other costs associated with
the floods themselves. For several of its assets, the FAD included some management fees
for the restoration of its assets, assuming these would not have been incurred without the
occurrence of the event.
Losses stemming from visits were estimated for Ayuthaya’s Historical Park, using a baseline
of more than 300,000 visitors a year (detailed between local and foreign, and visitation
numbers per months over a three year period 127 ), with tickets selling at THB 220 for
foreigners and THB 40 for locals. Estimates were made upon the assumption that during
the flood period, only 5 percent of the usual visitors for this yearly quarter are visiting the
sites, 128 and that recovery would be made over a year, with a slower pace for local
visitors, as they themselves might be affected for a longer period by the current
situation. 129 It is important to note that while Ayuthaya experienced significant damage
126 Cross-references were checked with the Tourism sector to avoid double accounting.
127 Information provided by FAD
128 Assumption made with Tourism Sector.
129 The team made this assumption based on the speed of recovery following the various recent events (red-shirt protests
in May 2010, airport closure in Dec 2009, avian flu in Jan 2005) that were relatively short (World Bank, Thailand Economic
Monitor, April 2011), where the recovery period of the tourism sector would be longer when media coverage was extensive
(airport closure), considering for this instance the extensive international media coverage of the floods. Furthermore we
assume that local visitors would be returning in slower numbers as the level of their disposable income has been impacted
by the floods.
THAI FLOOD 2011 RAPID ASSESSMENT FOR RESILIENT RECOVERY AND RECONSTRUCTION PLANNING
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