From El Niño to earthquakes: A leading disaster watcher scans the horizon for 2019

By Ben Parker

The number of earthquakes, floods, typhoons and other ‘natural disasters’ was well below the 21st-century average last year, even though 10,000 people were killed and 60 million affected. But things may well change for the worse in 2019, warns Debarati Guha-Sapir of the University of Louvain.

Guha-Sapir and her colleagues at the Centre for the Epidemiology of Disasters, or CRED, are disaster watchers, based at the Belgian University of Louvain.

Using a database of 18,000 disaster events that goes back to 1900, they compile an annual review in conjunction with the UN International Strategy for Disaster Reduction. The study, focused on a wide range of natural hazards, is used by governments and UN agencies as they track losses and damage and plan disaster mitigation and adaptation in the face of climate change.

Among the unusual events Guha-Sapir noted in a recent presentation of 281 climate and geophysical events in 2018 were wildfires in Greece that killed 126 people – the worst seen in Europe since 1900. US wildfires were also exceptional: causing over $16 billion in damages and killing 88 people. Half of 2018’s disaster-related deaths were in Indonesia, however, mainly due to earthquakes.

Guha-Sapir took some time out during a visit to Geneva to discuss why it’s still tricky to calculate death tolls, whether storms are becoming more intense, and her predictions for 2019.