Economic loss assessment of typhoon-induced storm surge disasters in the South China Sea based on GSA-BP model

Abstract

In the context of global climate warming and rising sea levels, the frequency of tropical cyclones in the South China Sea region has shown a significant upward trend in recent years. Consequently, the coastal areas of the South China Sea are increasingly vulnerable to storm surge disasters induced by typhoon, posing severe challenges to disaster prevention and mitigation in affected cities. Therefore, establishing a multi-indicator assessment system for typhoon storm surges is crucial to provide scientific references for effective defense measures against disasters in the region. This study examines 25 sets of typhoon storm surge data from the South China Sea spanning the years 1989–2020. A comprehensive assessment system was constructed to evaluate the damages caused by storm surges by incorporating the maximum wind speed of typhoons. To reduce redundancy among multiple indicators in the assessment system and enhance the stability and operational efficiency of the storm surge-induced disaster loss model, the entropy method and bootstrap toolbox were employed to process post-disaster data. Furthermore, the genetic simulated annealing algorithm was utilized to optimize a backpropagation neural network intelligent model (GSA-BP), enabling pre-assessment of the risks associated with storm surge disasters induced by typhoon and related economic losses. The results indicate that the GSA-BP model outperforms the genetic algorithm optimized BP model (GA-BP) and the simulated annealing algorithm-optimized BP model (SA-BP) in terms of predicting direct economic losses caused by storm surges. The GSA-BP model exhibits higher prediction accuracy, shorter computation time, and faster convergence speed. It offers a new approach to predicting storm surge losses in coastal cities along the South China Sea.