Global socioeconomic Losses from natural disasters for the year 2017 and their place in the yearly loss estimates since 1900
Abstract
Natural disasters in the year 2017 caused over 285 billion USD (with some losses still to be counted and reassessed) in direct damage which is the 6th highest in inflation-adjusted history (note: not normalised) and since 1995 according to the CATDAT Damaging Earthquakes Database. The last four years have delivered relatively low losses in comparison. 2011 with the Tohoku earthquake, and 2008 with the Sichuan earthquake were two of the worst years, with 2005, 1995 and 2010 also delivering large losses. The interesting thing about 2017 however was the large percentage of losses from North America and the Caribbean with over 60% of losses, mostly as a result of the three hurricanes (Harvey, Irma and Maria) and bushfires. This also corresponds to likely the largest insurance year for natural disasters once the final losses are quantified. Given the lower level of earthquake and typhoon losses in Asia, the death toll for the globe in 2017 was under 10,000; much lower than the on average 50,000 deaths per year and median 21,000 deaths per year (over the past 30 years). The number of loss events remained much the same as past years with no significant trends seen apart from the regional differences in cyclone activity. In terms of relative losses, there were however a number of small countries because of Hurricane Irma and Maria, which had very large losses compared to their capital stock and GDP. In absolute losses, the same 3 hurricane events (although Harvey was mostly flood losses) have meant that tropical storms remain since 1960 as the natural disaster type which has the largest economic losses as a percentage of all types. Earthquakes continue to be the deadliest natural disaster event (since 1960).
- Publication:
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EGU General Assembly Conference Abstracts
- Pub Date:
- April 2018
- Bibcode:
- 2018EGUGA..2010385D