摘要：Over the past few decades, nations have suffered great losses in lives and economic assets from an increasing number of natural disasters, which may be possibly due to climate change, combined with rapid economic and population growth particularly in hazard-prone areas. Although the number of people killed by natural disasters decreased steadily over the past few decades, the number of natural disasters, the number of people affected by natural disasters, and the economic losses caused by natural disasters increased substantially. According to the Emergency Events database (EM-DAT Database) from the Centre for Research on the Epidemiology of Disasters (CRED), the number of natural disasters increased from around 50 in 1960 to more than 400 in 2011, representing a 700 percent increase over the past five decades.1 The number of people affected by natural disasters increased substantially over the past few decades as well, even as the number of people killed by natural disasters decreased steadily since the 1960s. The estimated economic damage caused by reported natural disasters increased from less than 1 billion (USD) in 1950 to more than 100 billion (USD) in 2011.2 Due to the increasing incidence and severity of these natural disasters, identifying determinants of natural disaster losses and understanding the difference across nations has become an important issue. More and more nations are aware of the significant negative impacts of natural disasters and realize the importance of catastrophic risk mitigation cooperation among nations.
