Increased Significance of Global Concurrent Hazards From 1981 to 2020

Abstract

The spatiotemporal overlap of multiple hazards defines what we call concurrent hazards, which usually cause more severe damage than what an isolated hazard would. Investigations of concurrent hazards at the global scale are limited. Here we first developed a novel criterion system for identifying concurrent hazards and then recognized 1,614 concurrent hazards during 1981–2020 from the 121,214 records including earthquake, storm, landslide, volcanic, wildfire and flood. Sixteen hot spot regions suffering from concurrent hazards were recognized for the first time at the global scale. By comparing two periods, 1981–2000 and 2001–2020, we found that the gross relative impact (economic damage and death) of concurrent hazards has considerably aggravated (6.3–117.0 times) in the past two decades. The low-income regions suffer more prominent increase (mostly 2–3 times of high-income regions), implying the inequitable patterns of concurrent hazard impact due to socioeconomic development. This spatial disparity entails the establishment of multidisciplinary and cross-regional collaborations in mitigating the impact of concurrent hazards.