SOLYMONE BLOG

Natural Disasters Have Caused 8 Million Deaths, US$7 Trillion Worldwide Since 1900

Vienna – Natural disasters have caused more than US$7 trillion (RM27.1 trillion) in economic damage worldwide since 1900, with floods and storms accounting for nearly 60 per cent of the total, researchers said yesterday. 
The death toll from such natural calamities — which also include earthquakes, volcanoes, droughts, heatwaves and wildfires — topped eight million from 1900 to 2015, according to findings presented at a meeting of the European Geosciences Union in Vienna. 
More than a third — 38.5 per cent — of the economic damage, and just over half the loss of life was the result of flooding, according to James Daniell, an Australian  risk engineer at the  Karlsruhe  Institute of Technology 
in Germany.
“Flooding is the key driver” for economic loss and death, said Daniell, who has catalogued 35,000 disasters over 115 years, the largest such database in existence. 
Since about 1960, storms and storm surges — the exceptional waves they cause — have replaced flooding as the most destructive forces, battering buildings and infrastructure. 
  • Whether this shift was due to climate change was impossible to say, he told AFP. 
  • “When we go back in time, the record is not complete,” he said on the sidelines of the annual gathering of about 13,000 Earth and space scientists. 
  • “We probably have floods and storms from the 1930s or 1940s, for example, that never came into the database.
  • ” The frequency of other natural disasters — notably earthquakes, which accounted for 26 per cent of losses, and volcanoes, which caused one percent — remained fairly constant over time.
Earthquakes accounted for nearly 30 per cent of deaths, some 2.3 million people over the 115-year period. Of those fatalities, nearly 60 per cent died when buildings collapsed, while about 28 per cent perished in a tsunami or landslide. 
Overall, the annual cost of economic losses due to natural disaster has increased progressively over time, the study found. 
But as a percentage of the rising value of all infrastructure on the ground — currently estimated at some US$300 trillion — losses have actually declined, Daniell said. 

Source:AFP
0 comments:

VISITORS DETAIL LOCATION


VISITORS GEOFLAGS SINCE AUGUST 26, 2009

SABAH, MALAYSIAN BORNEO - THE LAND BELOW THE WIND

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FwwqqEiV0is

National Portal News Onine

Translate

TOTAL PAGES VIEW SINCE 30 DAYS AGO

TRANSLATE TO YOUR LANGUAGE

Solymone

My photo
Tenghilan, TUARAN, Sabah, Malaysia

MY FACEBOOK

VISITORS LOCATION GLOBE

VISITORS NATIONAL FLAG

VISITORS GEOFLAGS BY CITY

WHY I KEEP RE-VISITING SABAH

WHY I KEEP RE-VISITING SABAH
Clicks To Read

IINTERNATIONAL BLOGSPOT

BLOG ARCHIVE

MALAYSIAN BORNEO BLOGGERS

MALAYSIAN BORNEO BLOGGERS

...................................................................

...................................................................
MALAYSIAN
Blog Widget by LinkWithin