Integrated health, social, and economic impacts of extreme events: evidence, methods, and tools

D isasters are rarely natural, hazards always are! Extreme weather events are natural physical phenomena, but it is their interactions with vulnerabilities of human life that makes them disasters. Although definitions vary, disasters are a combination of complex, interdependent, mutually influential factors, in action simultaneously. They are best described as 'serious disruptions of the functioning of a community causing widespread human, material, social, economic or environmental losses which exceed the ability of the affected community or society to cope using its own resources' (1). With this view as a point of departure, this special volume on health and health system impact of natural disasters presents studies culminating from the research carried out under the European Commission's 6th Framework Program 'Project MICRODIS-Integrated Health, Social and Economic Impacts of Extreme Events: Evidence, Methods and Tools'. It was a joint research project coordinated by the Centre of Research on the Epidemiology of Disasters (CRED) bringing together 19 research institutions and partners from 13 countries across Europe and Asia. Why investigate? The need to investigate natural disasters at micro-levels is pertinent for several reasons. First, in the course of climate change and global warming, there is an observed shift in the frequency of extreme weather event occurrences. Although the causality is widely debated, and the correlations remain un-quantified, the co-occurrence is undeniable. Second, unequal geographic distribution of the disasters and their varying intensities pose special challenges. Higher frequencies of natural disasters occur in low-and middle-income countries, where the population in general is vulnerable to one or the other type of disaster and predominantly the poor are affected (2). Asia represents about three-fifths of the world population and has been worst hit by natural disasters in the past few decades (3). In the year 2011, Asia accounted for 44% of global natural disasters, 86% of global disaster victims, and 75% of global disaster damages. Similar trends were recorded from 2001 to 2010 (4). Third, specific disasters affect specific geographic areas. In both Asia and Europe, floods, earthquakes, and windstorms accounted for nearly 75% of all extreme events in the past few decades (5). Hydrological disasters accounted for 57% of total disaster victims in 2011. Fourth, the estimated economic losses from natural disasters are rising in an unprecedented way. They were the highest ever registered (235% increase) in 2011 as compared to the annual average damages (US$ 109.3 billion) from 2001 to 2010 (4). Figure 1 …