Disaster data: A balanced perspective - Sep 2006
Natural disasters in the first semester of 2006:
Summary
2006 1st Semester
|
1996-2005 1st semester
average
| |
No. of disasters
|
174
|
155
|
No. of countries affected
|
68
|
75
|
No. of people killed
|
9,273
|
27,389
|
No. of people affected
|
28 million
|
139 million
|
Economic damages (US$)
|
6.2 billion
|
15.2 billion
|
South-East Asia once again topped the list of disaster impacts over the first 6 months of 2006, with 85% of worldwide deaths from natural disaster over this period occurring in South-East Asia.
An interesting point to note about the first semester of 2006 is the significant number of recorded flood disasters, with a total of 113 floods representing all-time high of 65% of all natural disasters. The first semester average for the preceding 10 years was of 58 floods, representing an average of only 36.5% of all natural disasters. In fact, floods constitute an increasingly large proportion of all disasters recorded in the EM-DAT database over the last 50 years.
Greater variations in precipitation due to climate change, together with an increase in the vulnerability of populations, highlights the need to shift our emphasis from disaster response to risk management.
Among extreme events, floods increasingly affect the livelihoods of rural people, setting back improvements in development in these areas by years. The upside of this situation is that floods are one of the disasters most amenable to prevention and mitigation. Time tested engineering techniques, many of which are low cost mechanisms and culturally appropriate, exist.
This is an issue that the disaster and development community can tackle. We hope that our warning calls will be picked up by the agencies most competent to address the prevention and mitigation of floods.
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