Evidence for disaster risk management from the Risk data hub: Analytical reports on natural hazards, vulnerabilities and disaster risks in Europe based on the DRMKC - Risk Data Hub
This report presents examples of single hazards analysis from the RDH. The latter offers an open-source methodology for risk assessment as well as an authoritative loss and damage database that can provide indication of what has been lost. The report aims to highlight how RDH data can provide fruitful insights to assess past disastrous events and their impacts, estimate trends and provide insights on future risks.
The analysis performed using the data hosted on the RDH provides some insights into EU risk landscape and the impacts of disasters over the past 30 -40 years, emerging new areas of risk, and vulnerability profiles across Europe:
- Most of the economic losses in Europe, were mainly due to river floods, flash floods and earthquakes with over 42%, 12%, and 10% shares of total losses respectively.
- The Countries most affected by natural hazards have been Italy, Germany and Spain.
- The year 2013 recorded the worst economic losses from floods while 2012 has had the largest economic losses overall across all hazards available in RDH.
- Despite the significant amount of damages and losses, the trend analysis seems to suggest a rather descending trend in impact of river floods in recent years. Observing the trend, the EU civil protection mechanism – implemented in 2001 – and the Flood Directive (2007/60/EC)15 appear to have been an important contribution in the descending trend.