ANALYSIS OF HYDRO-METEOROLOGICAL DISASTERS IN EUROPEAN UNION COUNTRIES IN THE PERIOD 2000-2021

Abstract

Over time, hydro-meteorological disasters, also called weather and/or climate-related disasters have recorded the highest occurrence of natural disasters, not only in European Union (EU) countries, but also worldwide, causing a total of most damage and life losses. Using available updated EM-DAT international disaster database, this study aim to provide the results derived from the analysis of the weather and climate-related disaster at EU countries level. Countries and disaster type disparities in terms of frequency, distribution, mortality and economic losses are highlighted. Since the reported losses have a certain amount of uncertainty, or are missing for some events, only the relevant disasters that resulted in at least ten people death and/or 10 million US$ have been assessed in this study. The EU countries population and GDP/capita time-series data were collected from the statistical database of European Environmental Agency (EEA). Between 2000 and 2021, EM-DAT reported 225 relevant natural disasters in EU countries, causing 86,390 deaths and total estimated direct damages of 186 billion US$. Among all these disasters those triggered by floods prove to be the most prevalent (40 %), followed by storms (28 %). In terms of mortality, most of the killed people were caused by heat waves, with a total of 81,673 registered deaths. Focusing on direct economic losses, floods provide more than half of the damages recorded so far, accounting 59.2 % of losses. Average annual economic losses in EU countries were around 8.5 billion US$, while the average losses per capita were almost 400 US$, which means an average annual loss of about 18 US$ per capita. During this period, no relevant trend was found for the variables analysed.