Major Natural Disasters in China, 1985-2014: Occurrence and Damages.
This study aimed to describe the characteristics of natural disasters and associated losses from 1985 to 2014. The Mann-Kendall method was used to detect any long-term trends and abrupt changes. Hotspot analysis was conducted to detect the spatial clusters of disasters. We found an increasing trend in the occurrence of integrated natural disasters (tau=0.594,p< 0.001),particularly for floods (tau= 0.507,p< 0.001), landslides (tau= 0.365,p= 0.009) and storms (tau= 0.289,p= 0.032). Besides, there was an abrupt increase of natural disasters in 1998-2000. Hotspots of droughts, floods, landslides and storms were identified in central, southern, southwest and southeast areas of China, respectively. Annual deaths from integrated natural disasters were decreasing(tau= -0.237,p= 0.068) at about 32 persons/year, decreasing at 17 persons/year for floods (tau= -0.154,p= 0.239), and decreasing at approximately 12 persons/year for storms (tau= -0.338,p= 0.009). No significant trend was detected in inflation-adjusted damages while a declining trend was detected in the ratio of year damage against GDP (gross domestic product). In conclusion, there has been an increasing trend in occurrence of natural disasters in China with the absence of an increase in life and economic losses. Despite the progress in the disaster adaption, there will be great challenges in disaster control for China in the future.
Department of Epidemiology, School of Public Health, Shandong University, 44 West Wenhua Road, Jinan 250012, China. 201413942@mail.sdu.edu.cn.
Weixiao
W
Han
Department of Epidemiology, School of Public Health, Shandong University, 44 West Wenhua Road, Jinan 250012, China. cliang10@jhmi.edu.
Chen
C
Liang
Department of Epidemiology, School of Public Health, Shandong University, 44 West Wenhua Road, Jinan 250012, China. bjiang@sdu.edu.cn.|Climate Change and Health Center, Shandong University, 44 West Wenhua Road, Jinan 250012, China. bjiang@sdu.edu.cn.
Baofa
B
Jiang
Department of Epidemiology, School of Public Health, Shandong University, 44 West Wenhua Road, Jinan 250012, China. weima@sdu.edu.cn.|Climate Change and Health Center, Shandong University, 44 West Wenhua Road, Jinan 250012, China. weima@sdu.edu.cn.
Wei
W
Ma
Climate Change and Health Center, Shandong University, 44 West Wenhua Road, Jinan 250012, China. ying.zhang@sydney.edu.au.|School of Public Health, University of Sydney, Sydney 2006, Australia. ying.zhang@sydney.edu.au.
Ying
Y
Zhang
D002681:China; D004190:Disasters / Q000145:classification / Q000191:economics / Q000266:history* / Q000706:statistics & numerical data; D049673:History, 20th Century; D049674:History, 21st Century
China; Mann-Kendall trend test; changing patterns; hotspots; natural disasters; spatiotemporal