In the last 20 years, flooding has been the most common natural disaster by far, accounting for 43% of all recorded events. Storms were second, at 28%, and earthquakes were third. The largest earthquakes in the last two decades struck Japan (2011), Indonesia (2005) and Chile (2010).
In a joint report with the UN Office for Disaster Risk Reduction, the Centre for Research on the Epidemiology of Disasters recorded 3,062 natural flood disasters between 1995 and 2015.The report also emphasises the increase in weather-related natural disasters across the period. Between 2005 and 2014, there were an average of 335 such natural disasters per year. This is an increase of 14% on the previous ten years, and nearly double the level recorded from 1985 to 1994.
According to the ‘International Disaster Database’, each country is faced with different disaster challenges.
Tokyo-Yokohama is the riskiest urban area in the world with 37 million residents living under the threat of tsunamis, earthquakes, monsoons and river floods. Researchers estimate that approximately 80% of Tokyoites are, at any one moment, potentially exposed to a very large earthquake.
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