ABSTRACT
The frequency of natural disasters recorded in the Emergency Events Database (EM-DAT 2015) has increased by almost threefold in the last four decades, from over thirteen hundred events in 1975–1984 to over thirty-nine hundred in 2005–2014. Asia and the Pacific accounts for half of the world's losses from hydro-meteorological and geophysical disasters. Disasters may cause greater absolute economic damage in high-income economies given their wealth and infrastructure, but lower-income economies are generally hit harder, losing a more significant portion of their GDP. Population growth in high-risk areas as well as poverty contributes to the region's vulnerability to disasters. From 1970 to 2014, almost two-thirds of deaths in the region from natural disasters were in low-income and lower-middle-income economies, with just 5 percent of deaths from high-income economies. Natural disasters have been increasingly destabilizing urban life.
