Cyclonic storm landfalls in Bangladesh, West Bengal and Odisha, 1877-2016: a spatiotemporal analysis

This paper constructs a georeferenced panel database that can be used to obtain information on occurrences and severities of cyclones for Bangladesh, West Bengal, and Odisha. It aims to improve the understanding of household and community responses to cyclone risks in the Bay of Bengal and coastal regions of Bangladesh and India.

Cyclone strike locations and impact zones are analyzed for several historical periods between 1877 and 2016. The findings indicate that although the median location has shifted eastward, there is a marked variability in location, especially after 1960. Impacts also have varied considerably within and across zones over time, with the highest-impact zones in northern Odisha and the Sundarbans region of West Bengal. The pronounced spatial and temporal variation in cyclone impacts will provide robust controls for comparative research on household and community adaptation to cyclones in the study region. The methodology developed in the paper is general and could be expanded to an arbitrarily large set of coastal locations.