Spatial–Temporal snapshots of global natural disaster impacts Revealed from EM-DAT for 1900-2015

Abstract

Natural disasters causing human, economic, or environmental losses include all types of geophysical, meteorological, hydrological, climatological, or biological events that disturb human and natural environments. Emergency preparedness for, response to, mitigation of, and recovery from natural disasters that are bases for sustainable development requires sound impact assessments at proper spatial and temporal scales. This research provides spatial–temporal views of world natural disasters recorded in the EM-DAT database for the period of 1900-2015. Views of natural disaster impacts in terms of human fatalities, injuries, affected, and property damages are summarized and ranked at the world, continent, and country levels and by decade and the whole period. Top 10, 20, and 30 out of 221 countries are highlighted and referenced with the world totals. Correlates of country disaster impacts with social-economic attributes are explored. While countries with significant disaster impacts are found in all continents, large developing countries (e.g. China, India) or developed countries (e.g. United States, Germany) lead the global natural disaster hotspots, which are small in numbers but large in total disaster losses. Such global inter-country views of natural disaster impacts provide useful insights for sustainability policy-making relevant to international and national humanitarian efforts towards natural disasters.