Natural Hazards & Disasters

An overview of the first half of 2022

Issue No. 68 Cred Crunch September 2022

While facing the day-to-day news stream, the most recent Table 2. Top 10 disasters by number of deaths (1st sem. 2022)
tragic events, such as heat waves, droughts, forest fires, and Disaster Months Country Total deaths
monsoon floods last July and August, tend to supersede the
recollection of earlier ones. This CRED Crunch newsletter re- Flood May-Aug India 1354
minds us of the disaster-related events of the first half of Flood Jun-Sep Pakistan 1061
2022. During this period, the EM-DAT disaster database rec-
orded 187 disasters from natural hazards1 in 79 distinct coun- Earthquake Jun Afghanistan 1036
tries. According to the available information, their impact Flood Apr South Africa 501
amounts to at least 6,347 deaths, 50 million people affect-
ed and total damage estimates exceeding 40 billion dollars Storm (Megi) Apr Philippines 289
(Table 1). These estimates are below the 2002-2021 average, Flood Feb Brazil 272
explained by disasters’ impacts data being skewed by mega-
Storm (Batsirai) Feb Madagascar 121
disasters, such as the Haiti earthquake in January 2010 and its
222,000 fatalities. Nevertheless, the first semester’s numbers Flood May Brazil 116
are close to the median calculated for the same period. The
Flood May-Jun Bangladesh 82
numbers are provisional and may need to be adapted in the
forthcoming 2022 annual report with new and updated Flood Jun-Aug Niger 75
reporting.
Table 3. Top 10 disasters by total affected people (1st sem. 2022)
Table 1. Disasters occurrence and impact: summary
Disaster Months Country N° affected
2022 2002-21 2002-21
Flood Jun-Sep Pakistan 33,001,575
1st sem. 1st sem. 1st sem.
(Mean) (Median) Flood May-Jun Bangladesh 7,200,000
Number of 187 170 167
Drought Jun-Aug Chad 2,100,000
disasters
Storm (Megi) Apr Philippines 2,081,361
Affected 79 78 75
countries Flood May-Aug India 981,220
Total deaths 6,347 35,207 6,551 Storm (Gombe) Mar Mozambique 736,123
Total affected 50,550,928 119,268,677 81,128,884 Flood Apr-Jun Guatemala 668,205
Economic 40,949,282 76,300,329 53,900,632 Flood Feb Bolivia 375,000
damages
(‘000 US$) Earthquake Jun Afghanistan 364,623

Storm (snow) Jan Syrian Arab Rep. 362,700

Floods have impacted India from May to August and Paki-
stan since June, each with more than one thousand deaths Table 4. Top 10 disasters by economic damage (1st sem. 2022)
during monsoon seasons that have prolonged in the second
Disaster Months Country Econ. dam.
semester (Table 2). Pakistan has been experiencing the most (‘000 US$)
devastating and widespread floods in the last 30 years. The Earthquake Mar Japan 8,800,000
more than 30 million affected in Pakistan account for more
than half of the semester's total of affected people worldwide Flood Feb-Mar Australia 5,900,000
(Tables 1 and 3). This represents one in seven people in Paki- Flood May China 3,900,000
stan with nearly one-third of the country under water. In
Bangladesh, millions of people have also been affected Storm Apr USA 3,200,000
(Table 3). Flood Apr South Africa 3,000,000

1 Storm Mar USA 3,000,000

From EM-DAT data (2022-09-05) , excluding technological, biologi-
cal, and extra-terrestrial hazards. Disasters that have started prior Drought Jan USA 3,000,000
to 2022 are excluded even if they are still ongoing during the first
semester (mostly long-lasting droughts, e.g., in Somalia). Disasters Storm Apr USA 2,200,000
that have started in the first semester are included even if they are Storm Mar-Apr USA 1,300,000
still ongoing during the second semester.
Storm May USA 1,300,000
 Fig 1. Disaster occurrence and impacts by continents (1st sem. 2022)
Outside of Asia, deadly floods have hit South Africa in April,
Brazil in May, Niger in June and beyond (Table 2). Guatemala
and Bolivia were also significantly exposed to floods (Table 3),
while significant flood-related economic damages have been
reported in Australia and China (Table 4).
Other major disasters include the June earthquake in Afghani-
stan, claiming more than a thousand lives. In addition, Chad
experienced a drought affecting millions of people. Storms
have had devastating effects as well during the first six months
of 2022. Tropical Storm Megi hit the Philippines in a hard way,
killing 289 people in April. Cyclone Batsirai in February was the
second most deadly storm in 2022, with 121 fatalities reported
in Madagascar. The following month, about 700 thousand peo-
ple were affected by Tropical Cyclone Gombe in Mozambique.
Back in January, Syria experienced heavy snowfall (Table 3).
Altogether, in the USA, the total storm-related damage ex-
ceeds ten billion US$ (Table 4).
All reported numbers may ask for some adaptations in the next
annual report of 2022, e.g. no European economic damage
figures have been registered or consolidated yet. Asia remains
the most affected continent for this first semester, followed by
the Americas (Fig. 1). Globally, floods remain the most fre-
quent and damaging disaster, followed by storms (Fig. 2). Fig 2. Occurrence and impacts by disaster types (1st sem. 2022)

CRED updates and recent publications

• CRED/UCLouvain and the Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre (IDMC) have signed a Memorandum of Understanding
of partnership with the objective of (1) facilitating and supporting UCLouvain in access to IDMC data and (2) collaborating
on expanding both organizations’ Natural Language Processing (NLP) capacities and tools to strengthen event detection
for disasters.
• Thomas Jideofor Ogbu has defended is doctoral thesis on : Examining the impact of protracted conflicts on mortality in
humanitarian emergencies : using small-scale surveys and conflict data from Yemen. July 2022 ;
• Recently published paper:
Ogbu, T. J.; Scales, S. E. ; Moitinho De Almeida, M.; van Loenhout, J. ; Speybroeck, N. ; Guha-Sapir, D. Predictors of exceed-
ing emergency under-five mortality thresholds using small-scale survey data from humanitarian settings (1999 – 2020):
considerations for measles vaccination, malnutrition, and displacement status. In: Archives of Public Health, Vol. 80, no.1
(2022). doi:10.1186/s13690-022-00916-0.

All figures presented in the CRED CRUNCH from "EM-DAT: The OFDA/CRED International Disaster Database”
Analysis & Writing by Damien Delforge, Regina Below, & Niko Speybroeck
Centre for Research on the Epidemiology of Disasters (CRED)
Institute of Health & Society (IRSS), UCLouvain
Data are subject to change, for enquires: contact@emdat.be

@CREDUCL