Effect of Benefit Fraud on Community Resilience in the Wake of Disaster
Journal
World Conference on Earthquake Engineering Proceedings
Journal Volume
2021
Start Page
7a-0003
ISSN
30065933
Date Issued
2021
Author(s)
Abstract
Emergency financial assistance provided for disaster relief creates opportunities for fraudulent behavior. History has shown that the amount of recovery funds lost to improper and potentially fraudulent payments could research millions to billions of dollars per event. Reducing such cost and investing available resources more appropriately could help communities recover more rapidly from the impact of severe disasters. Unfortunately, research on the effects of fraud activity has been overlooked in resilience research. In this study, a conceptual model is formulated based on the observed phenomena and criminology theory. Then, an agent-based computational model, which includes a simulation environment of a community facing an earthquake disaster, fraudsters, and application inspectors is created to model benefit fraud behavior. The simulation considers the effect of both micro-level disaster demands due to building damages and meso-level social variables on benefit fraud, and estimates the cost to communities associated with these post-disaster crimes. Statistical data from the U.S. government reports in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina and Rita is used for calibration. The results of simulation runs demonstrate that strengthening application review and lessening target vulnerability can help lessen the loss caused by benefit fraud, but it is important to find the balance between the loss of fraudulent payments and the speed of aid distribution in order to improve the overall resilience of communities.
Subjects
benefit fraud
community resilience
financial assistance policy
post-disaster crimes
social impact
Publisher
International Association for Earthquake Engineering
Type
conference paper