With three substantial natural hazard events occurring simultaneously, I thought I would post a round-up of those rapidly-evolving events: 1. Hurricane Tomas As feared, Hurricane Tomas is now bringing heavy rainfall to Haiti.  The path of the storm has been somewhat erratic, as the Tropical Storm Risk track map shows.  However, the storm is now tracking in  a generally north-northwesterly direction, and is likely to pass just to the west of …

Long term readers of this blog will know that one of its original purposes was to disseminate the work that I do collating data on fatal landslides worldwide.  As the Attabad situation reduces in its intensity I plan to return to some of those key themes.  So here is a half term report on the occurrence of fatal landslides in 2010. Numbers of landslides:As of the end of 30th June …

The Jakarta Post has an overview image of the Bandung landslide:

NB there is an alaysis of the data in thiese maps in this post:http://daveslandslideblog.blogspot.com/2010/02/analysis-of-fatal-landslides-in-asia.html I have recently worked up two new maps of the distribution of fatal landslides, based upon the fatal landslide database that I maintain. This first map shows the global distribution of non-seismic landslides for the period 2006-2008. Each dot represents a single fatal landslide. The colours indicate the year: Red = 2008Blue = 2007Green = 2006 …

This post presents the data from the Durham University Fatal Landslide database for 2009. First, this is the map of fatal landslides. Each red dot represents a single landslide recorded on the database. Click on the map for a better view in a new window: The map shows the usual distribution. Note the high incidence of landslides in SW India, the Philippines and in java in Indonesia. The high occurrence …

As we are now at the end of the “noughties” I thought that it would be interesting to compile a list of the ten most important “natural” (i.e. geophysical and hydro-meteorological) disasters of the decade. This is not intended to be a list of the ten most damaging or with the highest number of fatalities, but more to reflect events that changed the way that we think or act about …

As we are now at the end of the “noughties” I thought that it would be interesting to compile a list of the ten most important “natural” (i.e. geophysical and hydro-meteorological) disasters of the decade. This is not intended to be a list of the ten most damaging or with the highest number of fatalities, but more to reflect events that changed the way that we think or act about …

The reinsurance giant Munich Re releases annual statistics on the losses from natural catastrophes each year. They released the data for 2009 yesterday, presumably banking on the balance of probabilities that there would be no more major events in the three days left of the year. The release is available here: http://www.munichre.com/en/press/press_releases/2009/2009_12_29_press_release.aspxOverall resultsThe news for 2009 is good, with no disasters causing mass (i.e. >10,000) fatalities. There list of the …

The reinsurance giant Munich Re releases annual statistics on the losses from natural catastrophes each year. They released the data for 2009 yesterday, presumably banking on the balance of probabilities that there would be no more major events in the three days left of the year. The release is available here: http://www.munichre.com/en/press/press_releases/2009/2009_12_29_press_release.aspxOverall resultsThe news for 2009 is good, with no disasters causing mass (i.e. >10,000) fatalities. There list of the …

On the flight to San Francisco yesterday I spent some time preparing for one of my AGU presentations – the one on Friday on the impact of landslides on society. I have been looking at my landslide fatality database, which now stretches back for over seven years. There is still some way to go with this to really understand long term trends in fatal landslides, but the dataset is now …