Abstract
Changes in society’s vulnerability to natural hazards are important to understand, as they determine current and future risks, and the need to improve protection. Very large impacts including high numbers of fatalities occur due to single storm surge flood events. Here, we report on impacts of global coastal storm surge events since the year 1900, based on a compilation of events and data on loss of life. We find that over the past, more than eight thousand people are killed and 1.5 million people are affected annually by storm surges. The occurrence of very substantial loss of life (>10 000 persons) from single events has however decreased over time. Moreover, there is a consistent decrease in event mortality, measured by the fraction of exposed people that are killed, for all global regions, except South East Asia. Average mortality for storm surges is slightly higher than for river floods, but lower than for flash floods. We also find that for the same coastal surge water level, mortality has decreased over time. This indicates that risk reduction efforts have been successful, but need to be continued with projected climate change, increased rates of sea-level rise and urbanisation in coastal zones.
Highlights
Storm surge events are projected to become more severe under climate change due to sea-level rise (Lin et al 2012), and impacts can increase due to population growth in coastal zones
An obstacle for identifying fatalities from storm surges is the fact that storm surge events, depending on their main characteristics and impacts, have been classified in EM-DAT as either a flood event, or storm event that has both wind and inundation related impacts, which are often smaller events in terms of fatalities
As a hydrological hazard it is only exceeded in terms of mortality by flash floods, but storm surges affect more people
Summary
Storm surge events are projected to become more severe under climate change due to sea-level rise (Lin et al 2012), and impacts can increase due to population growth in coastal zones. Compared to fatalities from riverine and rainfall-related flooding (Jonkman 2005), fatality numbers for storm surges are not consistently recorded in national and global databases (Jonkman and Vrijling 2008), and are often neglected in scientific assessments. Regional analyses of fatalities from tropical cyclones and related surge events are available (Rappaport 2014, Alam and Dominey-Howes 2015), but the lack of consistent recording and reporting at the global level of storm surge events, coastal flooding, and their impacts hinders the understanding of the frequency and impacts of these phenomena. In the much used EM-DAT database (EM-DAT) on global disaster impacts, storm surge events are listed under both the flood and storm (cyclone) categories. The analysis of large scale impacts of storm surges, and long term trends in occurrence and impacts is valuable for planning of risk reduction and adaptation efforts
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