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Natural
disasters have been increasing every year due to the various factors such as
urbanization, population growth, destruction of natural environment and climate
change. Further, Asian region
accounts nearly 90 % of the total affected people in the world.
This
human suffering is happening more in devloping countries, especialy
poverty-stricken countries and also catastrophic natural disasters cause
enoumous amount of economic losses, which sometimes exceed the GDP of these
countries.
Natural
disasters have a negative factor to inhibit the promotion of sustainable
development and therefore it is essential to conduct comprehensive disaster
measures in Asian region.
This
data book including the disaster data of Asian region in the past 100 years, is
compiled by ADRC, utilizing a disaster databse (EM-DATA) owned by CRED (the
Center for Research on the Epidemiology of Disasters, Louvain Catholic
University) in Belgium.
Furthermore,
GLIDE Number Project, which ADRC proposed and has been promoting in cooperation
with CRED, UN-OCHA and ReliefWeb, is applied to this data book.
This
data book hopes to stimulate a process of learning from the past and applying to
the future disaster measures.
August
2002
Satoru
Nishikawa
Executive
Director