CRED Crunch, Issue no. 68, September 2022: Natural hazards and disasters - An overview of the first half of 2022

This CRED Crunch newsletter details the disaster-related events of the first half of 2022. During this period, the EM-DAT disaster database recorded 187 disasters from natural hazards1 in 79 distinct countries. According to the available information, their impact amounts to at least 6,347 deaths, 50 million people affected and total damage estimates exceeding 40 billion dollars. These estimates are below the 2002-2021 average, explained by disasters’ impacts data being skewed by megadisasters, such as the Haiti earthquake in January 2010 and its 222,000 fatalities. Nevertheless, the first semester’s numbers are close to the median calculated for the same period.

The numbers contained in this newsletter are provisional and may need to be adapted in the forthcoming 2022 annual report with new and updated reporting. No European economic damage figures have been registered or consolidated yet. Asia remains the most affected continent for this first semester, followed by the Americas. Globally, floods remain the most frequent and damaging disaster, followed by storms.