It is meaningful but in a slightly confusing way as a mixed proxy for wealth of the area, density, and severity with the last potentially "rounded down to zero"

It is meaningful but in a slightly confusing way as a mixed proxy for wealth of the area, density, and severity with the last potentially "rounded down to zero" by appropriate countermeasures. It does ignore the human costs so one empty mansion getting wrecked vs an entire favella killing thousands for instance the previous looking worse. Combine that with a rise in development making it look worse without completly mitigating counter measures - it models the fiscals of the disastee only. Important if it is your job to try to assess liabilities and baseline what is cost effective for prevention but not a measure directly of human cost or devestation.