For my Geo-spatial project, I decided to look at all of the natural disasters that have been happening throughout the world between the years 1900-2019.

Within my dataset, it included: total deaths, total affected, and total homeless (after each disaster). With that being said, I specifically wanted to look at, what natural disaster subgroup has caused the most deaths throughout the years, breakdown each natural disaster to find out where that natural disaster has dominated and then finish off with a timeline montage of the previous question, but really emphasizing where, what, and the total number for each country.

The different types of natural disaster subgroups I will be looking at, include: Climatological, Biological, Hydrological, Geophysical, Extra-terrestrial, and Meteorological.

First, let’s define what each natural disaster mean and give examples of exactly what they are. In order:

Climatological: “Phenomena that are a result of climate functions that shift outside their normal state thanks to different factors that impact the climate.” An example of this would be: cyclones, thunderstorms, tornadoes, and air pollution. https://www.universalclass.com/articles/business/preparing-for-climatological-disasters-for-risk-reduction-in-business.htm#:~:text=Most%20experts%20describe%20climatological%20disasters,factors%20that%20impact%20the%20climate

Biological: “Natural scenarios involving disease, disability, or death on a large scale among humans, animals and plants due to micro-organisms like bacteria, virus, or toxins.” A few examples of this would include: Malaria, influenza, and dengue fever. https://ndma.gov.in/kids/biologicaldisaster.html#:~:text=Biological%20disasters%20are%20natural%20scenarios,bacteria%2C%20or%20virus%20or%20toxins.

Hydrological: “Any violent or abnormal movement of water on land.” A few examples of this would be: droughts, floods, or landslides. https://www.universalclass.com/articles/business/preparing-for-hydrological-disasters-in-disaster-risk-reduction.htm#:~:text=What%20Is%20A%20Hydrological%20Disaster,atypical%20behavior%20of%20water%20sources.

Extra-Terrestrial: “A hazard caused by asteroids, meteoroids, and comets as they pass near-earth, enter the Earth’s atmosphere, and/or strike the Earth, and by changes in interplanetary conditions that effect the Earth’s magnetosphere, ionosphere, and thermosphere. Although this hasn’t happened to the Earth, an example would be an asteroid hitting the Earth. https://www.un-spider.org/category/disaster-type/extraterrestrial#:~:text=Definition,magnetosphere%2C%20ionosphere%2C%20and%20thermosphere.

Geophysical: “Disasters that are about by tectonic and seismic activity below the Earth’s surface” A few examples of this would be: an earthquake, landslides, or volcanic activity/emissions. https://www.universalclass.com/articles/business/the-category-of-geophysical-disasters-in-disaster-risk-reduction.htm#:~:text=Geophysical%20disasters%20are%20disasters%20that,as%20shaking%20and%20unstable%20ground.

Meteorological: “Disasters caused by extreme weather such as rain, drought, snow, extreme heat or cold, ice or wind. A few examples of this would be: a blizzard, hurricane, flood, droughts, hailstorms, or heat waves. https://www.omicsonline.org/meteorological-disasters-peer-reviewed-open-access-journals.php#:~:text=Meteorological%20disasters%20are%20caused%20by,particularly%20the%20weather%2Dforming%20processes.

Before I report my findings, I would like to mention that: Extra-terrestrial is not within the report because although it was within my dataset, there haven’t been any DEATHS from this disaster, more total affected, and aftermaths that were only prevalent in Russia. With that being said, I didn’t think it was as interesting as my other findings, and felt more of an outlier.

Now onto the findings!

To answer the first part of my analysis, of “what natural disaster subgroup has caused the most deaths,” In the first graph we can see that the Climatological subgroup has caused the most total deaths by natural disaster, with a total of 11,735,688.

For the second part of my project, I decided to emphasize where each natural disaster happened and break down the total number into portions depending on where each disaster hit where. I was also able to create a color key, so it shows if one country has a higher number the color will get darker or essentially turn into a different color just highlight where the disaster was the most frequent.

I have them broken down in order of my definitions, so: Climatological, Biological, Hydrological, Geophysical, and Meteorological.

After looking through each broken down graph, to start off the United States although it feels like we’ve been through hell and back. Here within the maps we can see that, we haven’t encountered anything too crazy to cause several thousands of deaths compared to other countries, like China. Almost every type of natural disaster, China leads with the most death, except for the Meteorological type deaths. Bangladesh has more deaths than China in that category, but we can see that China and India are shaded a little bit darker than the rest of the countries.

Lastly, I have added in an interactive timeline, map graph. The natural disasters are color coded and throughout the video it shows what type of natural disaster was most prevalent and where it was the most prevalent. So throughout, the dot becomes bigger, smaller, and the colors get darker to really illustrate when and where each disaster happened.

Overall, I thought this project and data was very interesting. It’s crazy to see through data what’s happening/what happened in other countries because we don’t hear about their issues often. In the news, we may see some issues that are really big or pertain to the United States, but little things not so much. Although we could probably infer why different countries are having so much or little disaster strikes, it’s still good to be aware because we could possibly help.