Overview of climatological, hydrological, meteorological and geological disasters during the period 2010 – 2019

Abstract

The article presents an overview of groups of climatological, hydrological, meteorological and geological disasters that occurred in the world during the years 2010 to 2019. In this article, disasters will be described in terms of category, number of occurrences, number of deaths and people affected. Data were obtained by consulting the database available on websites and articles and magazines specialized in disaster management. To obtain international data, the following were consulted: the Emerging Events Database (EM-DAT) associated with the Centre for Research on Epidemiology on the Disasters (CRED); the CRED Annual Disaster Reports; the World Health Organization (WHO) website database; reports from the United Nations Office of Disaster Reduction Risk (UNDRR); as well as journal sources. It was possible to observe that the year 2010 was the year with the highest number of deaths due to disasters concentrated in Haiti, Russia and Somalia. Earthquakes, heat waves, floods and droughts were the phenomena that most caused deaths related to geological, meteorological, hydrological and climatological disasters. Many secondary biological disasters were cited as consequences of the groups of disasters analysed and often arising from the unworthy conditions imposed on populations affected by other groups of disasters. Some factors can be cited as extremely important to justify disasters, among which the magnitude and frequency of the phenomenon; the predisposition of some countries to suffer from the impact of more than one type of phenomenon many times, in the same year; the preparation of the population to face the disaster; and the social, political, and economic situation that will indicate the degree of vulnerability and capacity for recovery of the population.