When we correct for population – showing this data in terms of death rates (measured per 100,000 people) – we see an even greater decline over the past century. This decline is even more impressive when we consider the rate of population growth over this period. Even in peak years with high-impact events, the death toll has not exceeded 500,000 since the mid-1960s. In most years fewer than 20,000 die (and in the most recent decade, this has often been less than 10,000). In recent decades we have seen a substantial decline in deaths. What we see is that in the early-to-mid 20th century, the annual death toll from disasters was high, often reaching over one million per year. This shows the estimated annual number of deaths from disasters from 1900 onwards from the EMDAT International Disaster Database. In the visualization shown here we see the long-term global trend in natural disaster deaths.

Those at low incomes are often the most vulnerable to disaster events: improving living standards, infrastructure and response systems in these regions will be key to preventing deaths from natural disasters in the coming decades. We know from historical data that the world has seen a significant reduction in disaster deaths through earlier prediction, more resilient infrastructure, emergency preparedness, and response systems. Low-frequency, high-impact events such as earthquakes and tsunamis are not preventable, but such high losses of human life are. All of these events pushed global disasters deaths over 200,000 – more than 0.4% of deaths in these years. But we also see the devastating impact of shock events: the 1983-85 famine and drought in Ethiopia the 2004 Indian Ocean earthquake and tsunami Cyclone Nargis which struck Myanmar in 2008 and the 2010 Port-au-Prince earthquake in Haiti. What we see is that in many years, the number of deaths can be very low – often less than 10,000, and accounting for as low as 0.01% of total deaths. In the visualizations shown here we see the annual variability in the number and share of deaths from natural disasters in recent decades.

This represents around 0.1% of global deaths. If we look at the average over the past decade, approximately 45,000 people globally died from natural disasters each year. The number of deaths from natural disasters can be highly variable from year-to-year some years pass with very few deaths before a large disaster event claims many lives.

November 13 2015 disasters