The 2009 fatal landslide map and statistics

This post presents the data from the Durham University Fatal Landslide database for 2009. First, this is the map of fatal landslides. Each red dot represents a single landslide recorded on the database. Click on the map for a better view in a new window:


The map shows the usual distribution. Note the high incidence of landslides in SW India, the Philippines and in java in Indonesia. The high occurrence of landslides along the southern margin of the Himalayan mountain chain is also clear, but is less continuous than usual. This reflects the 2009 monsoon rainfall pattern, which was substantially below average, especially in the northwest of India, as the map below (for India only), from Monsoon Online, shows. The map indicates the departure from the mean annual monsoon rainfall:

In terms of statistics, the key data are:

• Number of recorded fatal landslides: 493 (this is substantially above the long term average).
• Number of recorded fatalities: 3611 (this is substantially below the long term average, primarily because there were no large earthquakes in populated mountainous areas).

Munich Re's list of the largest disasters of 2009

The reinsurance giant Munich Re releases annual statistics on the losses from natural catastrophes each year. They released the data for 2009 yesterday, presumably banking on the balance of probabilities that there would be no more major events in the three days left of the year. The release is available here:

http://www.munichre.com/en/press/press_releases/2009/2009_12_29_press_release.aspx

Overall results
The news for 2009 is good, with no disasters causing mass (i.e. >10,000) fatalities. There list of the top ten events in terms of fatalities is as follows (NB using the logical European style date format of dd.mm.yyyy):

• 30.09/1.10.2009: Indonesia: Earthquakes, 1,195 deaths
• 26-30.09.2009: South East Asia, East Asia: Typhoon Ketsana, 694 deaths
• 07-10.08.2009: China, Philippines, Taiwan: Typhoon Morakot, 614 deaths
• 03-14.10.2009: South East Asia, East Asia: Typhoon Parma, 469 deaths
• 25-27.05.2009: Bangladesh, Bhutan, India: Cyclone Aila, 320 deaths
• 29.09.-15.10.2009: India: Floods, 300 deaths
• 06.04.2009: Italy: Earthquakes, 295 deaths
• 21.08-15.09.2009: India: Floods, 223 deaths
• Aug-Sep 2009: West Africa, Central Africa: Floods, 215 deaths
• 04-13.11.2009 El Salvador, Nicaragua, Mexico, USA: Hurricane Ida, 204 deaths

Two aspects of these statistics are particularly interesting. First, the lack of a really large event is pleasing, but is probably no more than a serendipitous lack of a large earthquake in a populated area and limited numbers of large land-falling tropical cyclones, especially in the Atlantic basin. Second, the top five events were all associated with large numbers of landslide fatalities, most notably perhaps typhoon Morakot in Taiwan, the landslides triggered by the Indonesian earthquake and the multiple slides in the Philippines caused by typhoon Parma.

Geographical distribution
The geographical spread of these larger events is quite wide, including SE Asia, E. Asia, S. Asia, Africa, Europe and Central America. However, probably the most interesting aspect of this entire release is a map of showing the location of all the natural catastrophes that have occurred through the year:

There are several things to note here. First, you may well have spotted that the highest density of catastrophes appears to have occurred in the United States, Europe and China. This of course reflects the vulnerability of countries with large asset values to geophysical and meteorological processes. Second, the distribution of the event types is quite varied. The climatological events are mostly concentrated in the USA and Australia; Europe and N. America is mostly affected by storms, whilst in Asia the events are primarily floods. Africa probably has far fewer catastrophes than most people would expect.

Economic Losses
Economic losses were also lower than in previous years at $50 billion, compared with $200 billion in 2008. The largest loss-inducing event was a winter storm that affected N. Spain and France in late January, inducing losses of $5.1 billion. The USA was affected by four of the ten events that caused the highest costs in terms of losses.

Climate Change
The effects of climate change on disaster losses is very complex issue. I am increasingly persuaded by the argument that there is now a strong climate change signal in the loss data, primarily due to increased precipitation intensities and increased intensities of the largest tropical cyclones, both of which are supported by strong scientific evidence that has been subjected to peer review. Interestingly, Munich Re are also pretty clear on this point:

'Torsten Jeworrek, Munich Re Board member responsible for global reinsurance business, drew attention to the marked increase in major weather-related natural catastrophes worldwide since 1950, the number now having more or less tripled. Economic losses from weather-related natural catastrophes in the period since 1980 totalled approximately US$ 1,600 bn (in original values). "Climate change probably already accounts for a significant share. In the light of these facts, it is very disappointing that no breakthrough was achieved at the Copenhagen climate summit in December 2009. At Munich Re, we look closely at a multitude of risks and how best to handle them. Risks that change in the course of time are especially hazardous. Climate change is just such a risk of change."

Losses caused by climate change will continue to increase in the future. Jeworrek: "We need as soon as possible an agreement that significantly reduces greenhouse gas emissions because the climate reacts slowly and what we fail to do now will have a bearing for decades to come."'

In the next few days I will review landslide events both for 2009 and for the "noughties", and also the major, game-changing disasters of the last decade.

Turkish landslide statistics

Image from: http://www.panoramio.com/photo/20677530

Just a short post to point out some interesting statistics on rockslides in Turkey. The source of the data is the General Directorate of Disaster Affairs in Turkey, reported here. The statistics are:
Total area at risk from rockslides in Turkey: 194,000 square kilometres
Number of people at risk: 8 million (11% of the population)
Number of fatalities from rockslides between 1980 and 2000: 177.

Given the high seismic hazard in Turkey, these statistics are quite interesting.

Losses in catastrophes in 2008 - initial statistics from Swiss Re

Tropical Cyclone Nargis montage from the Brisbane Times

Swiss Re Sigma has just released its initial statistics on losses in catastrophes in 2008. Of course it is important to understand that reinsurance look at catastrophes in a particular way, meaning that the statistics are weighted in particular to low frequency - high magnitude events, rather than iterative processes, and to losses causing a high level of financial loss. There is no problem with this of course, but it is important to keep it in mind.

So what do the statistics show? Unfortunately the picture is pretty grim. Swiss Re estimate that these large loss events cost over 238,000 lives, most notably as a result of tropical cyclone Nargis in Burma (Myanmar), which led to 138,400 fatalities, and the Wenchuan (Sichuan) earthquake, which killed 87,400 people. In terms of economic losses, Swiss Re estimate that catastrophes cost about US$225 billion in 2008, of which about $50 billion was insured. The greatest costs were from the Wenchuan earthquake ($85 billion) and Hurricane Ike (USA) ($40 billion).

All in all 2008 has been the second worse year for insured losses on record (2005 was the worse because of Hurricane Katrina). I guess that this is unwelcome given the global financial malaise.

I have to say though that for me perhaps the interesting aspect is the following graph within the report (download a hard copy of the report here):

So let's take a quick look at the recent trends. First, the palest blue line is the total insured losses. There is a huge amount of scatter from year to year, but the general trend is clearly upwards. However, the other two losses show that this increase arises primarily from the weather related perils (the darker blue line). Over the last decade there is no obvious trend in losses from man-made disasters, with a single obvious peak in 2001 - no prizes for guessing the cause of that. Note also that very large-scale earthquake losses to the insurance industry are comparatively rare - most earthquakes occur in areas that have very low levels of insurance cover. Thus the 2005 Kashmir earthquake and the 2008 Wenchuan earthquake hardly appear on the above graph.

The trends in losses interests me greatly. I wanted to check that there is a net increasing trend in losses from weather-related perils. A quick, back of the envelope graph shows that there is indeed a clear upward trend:


I fitted a fairly simple exponential function above, although it may not necessarily be the best choice. There is a very clear upward trend in insured losses from natural perils. This rise in economic losses from natural perils is generally ascribed to increasing vulnerability - i.e. we have more economic assets in the "firing line". However, note that insured losses from man-made perils are not following the same trend. Presumably, this is also the case for man-made perils, but in this case the improvement in management and control is keeping track.

I will return to these data in the future.

October 2008 fatal landslide map

Rather later than is ideal (for which I apologise), here are the maps for fatal landslides in October 2008.

First, the statistics:
Number of recorded fatal landslides: 22
Number of recorded fatalities: 179
The average for the period 2002-2007 inclusive was 398 fatalities, excluding the impact of the Kashmir earthquake in 2005, so 2008 is considerably below the long term average.

This is the map of the fatal landslides that I recorded (click on the map for a better view):

As the SW monsoon ceases the concentration in S. Asia is now absent, so as usual the distribution has become far less concentrated.

This is the map of all of the fatal landslides that have I recorded in 2008 up to the end of October (again click on the map for a better view):


As usual, your comments and corrections are welcome.