Natural Hazards

Maplecroft’s Natural Hazards Risk Atlas 2011 is designed to help business, investors and international organisations assess and compare the risks and resilience to the occurrence of natural hazard events in 196 countries. The Atlas includes indices and interactive subnational maps of 12 natural hazard risks, as well as scorecards for all countries. In addition, the Atlas also measures countries’ overall economic exposure and socio-economic resilience to natural hazards.

• Twelve indices analysing the major natural hazards worldwide; including: seismic activity, tsunamis, volcanoes, landslides (both driven by earthquakes and heavy rain), flooding, tropical storms and cyclones, storm surges, severe storms, extra-tropical cyclones, wildfires and drought.
• Subnational mapping of each index allows the identification of natural hazards risks down to local levels, allowing and risk managers to pinpoint risks to individual assets such as factories, refineries or pipelines. Each subnational map is interactive and has been developed to enable users to view natural hazards risks down to levels as low as 22km² worldwide.
• Country scorecards provide a summary of the major natural hazards exposure of each country and enable the easy comparison of risks.
• Maplecroft has also analysed the potential for economic disruption from natural hazards, by compiling a subnational map of economic exposure to the 12 natural hazards featured in the Atlas. Index views compare this risk across all 196 countries to consider the absolute economic values exposed to natural hazards and also how this exposure compares to a countries total economic output. These two indices provide insights into how major natural disasters could impact a country’s economy and the wider implications for the global economic system.
• Natural hazards have different impacts across countries, to complete the picture of natural hazards risk Maplecroft has designed a unique Socio-economic Resilience Index which assess the factors that combine to increase the chance that occurrences of natural hazards, will become major natural disasters.