Over 300 natural disasters occur yearly around the world causing millions of deaths and trillions in economic losses. These are not only caused by weather but also by earthquakes, tsunami, landslide, wildfire, volcanic eruptions, storms and drought. Disasters have a profound impact on human health and well-being. These impacts can be direct (e.g. injury and illness) or indirect (e.g. loss of livelihoods, increased poverty, lack of water and sanitation), which in turn can lead to reduced access to adequate food and medical services. Developing countries have the least capacity to manage these disasters, with weak communication systems and insufficient resources for disaster risk reduction, disaster response, disaster management, insurance and disaster prevention.
While most of the world’s natural disasters are not man-made, human activities such as climate change can increase the risk of occurrence of some natural disaster events. Often, it is a combination of different types of hazards that can lead to disasters, such as an earthquake and an earthquake-induced tsunami or a landslide and a flood. The most common natural disasters are those caused by the weather, which include hurricanes and tornadoes in the United States and flooding and drought in China. In addition to the monetary costs of these events, they have serious effects on people’s physical and mental health. Hundreds of thousands of people die each year and millions are left homeless after these natural disasters, particularly in low-income countries. The occurrence of a single extreme event can kill tens or even hundreds of thousands of people, as was the case with many of the deadliest disasters in recent years, including the Haiti earthquake in 2010 and the Japan tsunami in 2011. The most common type of natural disaster is flooding.
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