Overall risks from climate-related impacts are evaluated based on the interaction of climate-related hazards (including hazardous events and trends) with the vulnerability of communities (susceptibility to harm and lack of capacity to adapt), and exposure of human and natural systems. Changes in both the climate system and socioeconomic processes -including adaptation and mitigation actions- are drivers of hazards, exposure, and vulnerability (IPCC Fifth Assessment Report, 2014).
This section provides a summary of key natural hazards and their associated socioeconomic impacts in a given country. And it allows quick evaluation of most vulnerable areas through the spatial comparison of natural hazard data with development data, thereby identifying exposed livelihoods and natural systems.
The charts provide overview of the most frequent natural disaster in a given country and understand the impacts of those disasters on human populations.
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Climate change is now recognized to have a significant impact on disaster management efforts and pose a significant threat to the efforts to meet the growing needs of the most vulnerable populations. The demands of disaster risk management are such that concise, clear, and reliable information is crucial. The information presented here offers insight into the frequency, impact and occurrence of natural hazards. Source (PDF)
Understanding natural hazard occurrence as well as historical climate conditions, in relation to development contexts, is critical to understanding a country’s historical vulnerability. This tool allows the visualization of different natural hazards or historical climate conditions with socio-economic and development datasets. Select the Development Context and either a Natural Hazard or Climate Condition and overlay horizontally by sliding the toggle left or right to gain a broader sense of historically vulnerable areas.
Data presented under Historical Climate Conditions are reanalysis products derived from ERA5-Land data. ERA5-Land is a global land-surface dataset at 9 km resolution, consistent with atmospheric data from the ERA5 reanalysis from 1950 onward. Climate reanalyses combine past observations with models to generate consistent time series of multiple climate variables. They provide a comprehensive description of the observed climate as it has evolved during recent decades, on 3D grids at sub-daily intervals.
This data has been collected, aggregated and processed by the Climate Resilience Cluster of the European Space Agency’s (ESA) Earth Observation for Sustainable Development (EO4SD) initiative.
- Earthquakes: Bangladesh is located in a seismically active and high-risk region. The northern and eastern regions of the country are particularly susceptible to earthquakes.
- Droughts: Seasonal droughts in Bangladesh most commonly affect the northwestern region, as it receives lower rainfall than the rest of the country. These droughts have a devastating impact on crops thereby also affecting the food security of subsistence farmers.
- Floods: Floods and riverbank erosions affect some one million people annually in Bangladesh. Once every three to five years, up to two-thirds of Bangladesh is inundated by floods. Floods affect a greater population base than any other natural hazard in the country.
- Cyclones: Sixty percent of the worldwide deaths caused by cyclones in the last 20 years occurred in Bangladesh. The cyclone that struck the coastal areas of Bangladesh in November 1970 caused over 300,000 deaths and US$ 2.5 billion worth of damage to property.
More information on natural hazards can be found at ThinkHazard.
- Defining and redefining the risk environment, entailing systematic and improved hazard analysis and vulnerability/community risk assessments, and risk treatment and ranking, including incorporation of climate change impacts.
- Managing the risk environment, including achieving a good balance of risk reduction options, moving from generic hazard to risk specific programs, and mainstreaming risk reduction across sectors through advocacy, policy and planning reform, and capacity building.
- Responding to the threats to the environment, including activating systems and mobilizing resources, utilizing vulnerability and risk databases for emergency response planning, and maintaining effective communications and early warning systems.