Research brief: What can we learn about multi-hazard impacts from global disaster records?

This research brief, titled "What can we learn about multi-hazard impacts from global disaster records?", analyzes global emergency event data from 2000-2018 (EM-DAT database) to understand the impacts of multi-hazards.

Key findings include:

• Multi-hazards are associated with a significant percentage of total economic damages (78%), people affected (83%), and deaths (69%).
• On average, a reported hazard pair has at least as much impact as a single hazard, and sometimes even more than the combined impact of two single hazards, depending on the hazard and impact types.
• Four archetypes are proposed to describe patterns of compounding impacts from multi-hazards: "the whole is greater than the sum of its parts," "the whole equals the sum of its parts," "one part determines the whole," and "the whole and the parts are limited by total impact."

The brief recommends further investigation and development of these archetypes to integrate multi-hazard interrelationships into risk assessments. It also emphasizes the need for standardized impact reporting procedures to sufficiently and consistently document multi-hazards and their impacts, which is crucial for advancing disaster risk understanding and policy recommendations.

The research analyzed nine hazard types (floods, extreme winds, earthquakes, landslides, cold waves, heatwaves, tsunamis, volcanic eruptions, and droughts) and developed an algorithm to identify multi-hazards.

For more information, the brief provides a link to the full paper, the MYRIAD-EU website, and contact details for Wiebke Jäger (w.s.jaeger@vu.nl).