ABSTRACT
Over the years, disasters have had an increasingly heavy economic and social impact in many countries. The Independent Evaluation Group (IEG) of the World Bank (2006) reported that, in constant dollars, disaster costs during the decade 1990–9 were 17 times higher (US$ 652 billion in material losses) than they were in 1950–9 (US$ 38 billion, at 1998 values). The IEG also noted that human losses have risen: between 1984 and 2003, more than 4.1 billion people were affected by disasters. The number of affected persons grew from 1.6 billion in the first half of the period in 1984–93, to 2.6 billion in the second half, in 1994–2003. The International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (2006) noted that in the past two decades, direct economic losses from disasters multiplied five-fold to US$ 629 billion. Annual direct losses from weather-related events alone increased from about $ 3.9 billion in the 1950s to $ 63 billion in the 1990s. Moreover, in the 1990s, an average of 80,000 people died each year due to disasters. In 2003, there were about 700 disasters which killed about 75,000 people and caused about US$ 65 billion damage.
