World Atlas of Natural Disaster Risk

Abstract

The year 2015 is the 25th annum of the international disaster and risk reduction proposed by the United Nations. Disaster risk reduction (DRR) has achieved significant progress worldwide. The goals of disaster risk reduction, climate change adaptation, and sustainable development have become the joint responsibility of all countries in their economic, societal, cultural, political, and ecological construction activities. In the past 25 years, UNISDR together with national governments, scientific community, NGOs, entrepreneur groups, media and various relevant regional organizations is gaining effective results in alleviating human being's casualties, property losses, and damages to resources and environment caused by natural hazards on the world and is earning a great reputation at every stratum of society as well. Nevertheless, data released by related UN organizations indicate that natural disaster and disaster risk are still on the rise globally. Some nations and regions are still extremely vulnerable to large-scale disasters, although significant progress has been made in DRR actions. Natural disaster risk reduction is still a long haul ahead. FoundationsThe global hot spots project jointly finished by the World Bank and Columbia University (the USA) is the first ever cartography of major natural disaster risks at the global scale (Dilley et al. 2005). The UNISDR Global Assessment Report on Disaster Risk Reduction (GAR) inspired this Atlas (UN-ISDR 2009, 2011 All faculties and students of BNU on the disaster risk science and the international experts who participated in the IHDP/Future Earth-Integrated Risk Governance and "111 Project", as well as all the personnel involved in these two projects, throughout ten years of preparation, planning, and action, were organized to compile this atlas, aiming to reflect the spatial patterns of the main natural disaster risk all around the world. This atlas provides scientific evidence for taking effective measures of world natural disaster risk reduction by demonstrating the spatial variation from the following three spatial scales for the main natural disaster risk on the world: the grid unit (1°× 1°, 0.75°× 0.75°, 0.5°× 0.5°, 0.25°× 0.25°, 0.1°× 0.1°or 1 km × 1 km), the comparable geographic unit (about 448,334 km 2 per unit), and the national or regional unit (245 nations and regions). International Scientific and Technological CooperationClose cooperation with worldwide scientific institutions lays the scientific foundation of this Atlas. Scientific BasisThe World Atlas of Natural Disaster Risk attempts to reveal the spatial pattern of the risks of natural disaster which are mainly caused by physical hazards in the world with multiple perspectives of natural environment, exposure, disaster loss, and disaster risk with the framework of Regional Disaster System Theory (Shi 1991(Shi , 1996(Shi , 2002(Shi , 2005(Shi , 2009. It emphasizes the spatial-temporal pattern of worldwide natural disasters from the perspective of individual disasters and integrated disasters, in...

A Way to Sustainability: Perspective of Resilience and Adaptation to Disaster

“…Obviously, the target of adaptation was to reduce the disaster risk. According to the classical disaster risk assessment theory [36], risk is the function of hazard and vulnerability, in which vulnerability also was determined by the environmental stability, HABs' exposure and sensitivity. Due to the difficulties of minimizing the hazard, in order to reduce the disaster risk, enhancing environmental stability, and reducing exposure and sensitivity are the main measures or strategies.…”

From Development's Disasters to Disasters' Development: The Territorial Expression of Vulnerability

“…Baseado no Relatório de avaliação global sobre a redução do risco de desastres (GAR), esse atlas destaca-se em vários aspectos positivos, como acurácia dos dados, dados recentes e comparabilidade espacial e temporal, além de revelar, por meio de uma base científica obtida pela cooperação de diversas instituições científicas em todo o mundo, os padrões espaciais de risco dos principais desastres naturais globais (Shi & Kasperson, 2015). Espacializar os desastres permite identificar fatores como a capacidade de resposta para reduzir a intensidade do risco, bem como o nível de desenvolvimento social e econô-mico.…”

“…O atlas é o primeiro do mundo que busca mapear sistematicamente os desastres naturais (Shi & Kasperson, 2015), ao apresentar um ranking dos países com maiores riscos de desastres, baseado no risco mundial provocado pelos 11 grandes desastres naturais − terremotos, vulcões, deslizamentos de terra, inundações, tempestades, tempestades de areia/poeira, ciclones tropicais, ondas de calor, ondas de frio, secas e incêndios -que foram avaliados e mapeados. Considerando a intensidade do risco por unidade territorial, o Brasil ocupa a sexta posição no mundo (Shi & Kasperson, 2015).…”

“…Considerando a intensidade do risco por unidade territorial, o Brasil ocupa a sexta posição no mundo (Shi & Kasperson, 2015). Por outro lado, países como Estados Unidos e Rússia ocupam as primeiras posições no ranking de intensidade do risco.…”

Automatic Type Recognition and Mapping of Global Tropical Cyclone Disaster Chains (TDC)

“…In this paper, we finished the regionalization of hazard-formative environment, the classification of global TDC, and the construction of the auto-recognition system of disaster chain type based on the disaster system theory [30]. Then, we designed and compiled a software with the auto-recognition and auto-mapping functions based on ArcEngine components and realized type recognition and the mapping of disaster chains.…”