Major Natural Disasters in China, 1985-2014: Occurrence and Damages.

Weixiao Han,Ying Zhang,Wei Ma,Chen Liang,Baofa Jiang

doi:10.3390/ijerph13111118

Abstract

This study aimed to describe the characteristics of natural disasters and associated losses from 1985 to 2014. The Mann-Kendall method was used to detect any long-term trends and abrupt changes. Hotspot analysis was conducted to detect the spatial clusters of disasters. We found an increasing trend in the occurrence of integrated natural disasters (tau = 0.594, p < 0.001), particularly for floods (tau = 0.507, p < 0.001), landslides (tau = 0.365, p = 0.009) and storms (tau = 0.289, p = 0.032). Besides, there was an abrupt increase of natural disasters in 1998–2000. Hotspots of droughts, floods, landslides and storms were identified in central, southern, southwest and southeast areas of China, respectively. Annual deaths from integrated natural disasters were decreasing (tau = −0.237, p = 0.068) at about 32 persons/year, decreasing at 17 persons/year for floods (tau = −0.154, p = 0.239), and decreasing at approximately 12 persons/year for storms (tau = −0.338, p = 0.009). No significant trend was detected in inflation-adjusted damages while a declining trend was detected in the ratio of year damage against GDP (gross domestic product). In conclusion, there has been an increasing trend in occurrence of natural disasters in China with the absence of an increase in life and economic losses. Despite the progress in the disaster adaption, there will be great challenges in disaster control for China in the future.

Highlights

Natural disasters are threats to populations because they could derail socioeconomic development, strain social safety nets, and usually require comprehensive emergency responses
Distance threshold in the analysis. We found the latter results were in line with the former results
US$35,397 million (4.0%) were caused by droughts, US$831 million were caused by wildfires, US$618,433 million (70.7%) were caused by floods, US$4,772 million (0.5%) were caused by landslides, US$33,312 million (3.8%) were caused by extreme temperature events (ETEs), and US$181,868 million (20.8%) were caused by storms

Summary

Introduction

Natural disasters are threats to populations because they could derail socioeconomic development, strain social safety nets, and usually require comprehensive emergency responses. During the last decade alone, Indonesia, Sri Lanka, Pakistan, China, Haiti, and Japan have all experienced natural disasters with high death tolls [3]. Wildfires, floods, and extreme weather events have led to serious economic losses [4]. Such disasters may occur more frequently [5]. Various component features of the climatic extremes, e.g., the dominant disaster type and the economic loss and death burden demonstrated mixed and inconclusive trends with considerable geographical variations [6]

Objectives

Methods

Conclusion