Recent Earthquake and Tsunami Disasters Worldwide

Abstract

AbstractIn recent years, the number of earthquake and tsunami disasters has been increasing globally. In addition to the earthquake and tsunami disasters, storm, flood, heavy rain and land sliding have been also increasing. Over the last quarter century, disasters with more than one thousand dead and missing occurred 60 times, and more than 1.2 million lives were lost in the world.In this chapter, the damages by seven recent disastrous earthquakes and tsunami in the world, including the 2004 Sumatra offshore earthquake and the 2008 Wenchuan earthquake in China, as well as by nine Japanese earthquakes and tsunamis, including the 1995 Kobe earthquake and the 2011 Tohoku earthquake are introduced, and the lessons learned from these earthquake and tsunami disasters are discussed.KeywordsDisastrous earthquakesLessons from disastersNatural disastersTsunamis