Economic activity during extreme events

Although extreme weather events, natural disasters or infrastructure failures potentially have important economic effects, quantifying these effects over small areas and fine time intervals has been difficult because of the fairly coarse scales available in most data sources. This paper surveys the use of relatively new and finely grained data available from some commercial sources, particularly transaction data and smartphone location data, to improve our understanding of economic effects of events. I review the limitations and challenges involved in the use of these data as well as the potential benefits that they offer.