Regional flood vulnerability

People affected by floods in 2009 Flash floods

General floods Asia

Countries most affected by floods in the last 10 years

Note: the size of the circles is proportional to the values shown.

Americas

Pacific Ocean

Europe 42 000

Pacific Ocean

Africa

Atlantic Ocean

Oceania 27 000

Indian Ocean

Source: "EM-DAT, The OFDA/CRED International Disaster Database.  Figure 14: Recent flood events in Hindu Kush-Himalaya.  Figure 15: Regional flood vulnerability.

roads and bridges and croplands, including killing livestock and many people. An estimated 20.5 million people were af- fected, over 1,700 were killed, 6 million were displaced and 1.89 million houses were destroyed. By November 2010, over 7 million were still affected and lacked proper housing (OCHA, Nov. 15th, 2010)

Parts of Nepal are vulnerable to seasonal flooding and an es- timated 250–300 persons die in floods each year while 5–6 million are physically exposed to flooding. In contrast Bhutan is to a much smaller extent exposed to large scale seasonal flooding and vulnerability here is largely associated with flash floods (FAO 2001). Only a few persons are killed each year. 200 persons are reported killed by natural disasters during 1998–2008. However around 200 000 are thought to be ex- posed to flooding each year.

Since Asia comprises a large portion of the World’s popula- tion, and more than 40% of all the floods in the world occur in Asia, a large number of people are affected by disasters (Fig. 14). More than 40% of the people killed by natural di- sasters are killed in Asia (Fig. 15). In the ten-year period from 1999–2008, 402 floods were recorded in Africa, 342 in the Americas, 259 in Europe and 649 in Asia. In the same time period close to 1 billion people were affected by floods in Asia whereas the corresponding figures for Europe were around 4 million, for the Americas 28 million and Africa 22 million. The vast majority of people either injured, made homeless or otherwise affected by natural disasters on a global basis, i.e. 80–90% live in Asia. As a rough estimate floods appear to cause 20–25% of all deaths associated with natural disas- ters across Asia (World Disaster Report, 2009, USAID, 2007, UNU-IAS, 2008).

37

2

3

2

2 0

5

7

0

3

2

0

0

0

0

6

0

3

0

3

0

1

1 8

0

0

5

1

0 0