A research group, including Project Assistant Professor Md. Rezuanul Islam and Associate Professor Yohei Sawada, has released a new ranking of historical tropical cyclone disaster risks that takes into account a wide range of social impact indicators, such as economic damage, number of deaths, injuries, houses destroyed, and houses flooded.
By ranking 87 tropical cyclones that made landfall in Japan between 1979 and 2019 based on both their social impacts and meteorological hazardousness, this study revealed three key findings. First, tropical cyclones with severe social impacts are not necessarily the strongest from meteorological perspectives. Second, tropical cyclones making landfall in the Kanto and Tokai regions tend to cause large economic damage, while those striking Kyushu and western Japan tend to cause more human casualties. Third, the frequency of tropical cyclones with significant social impacts is roughly similar from Kyushu to eastern Japan, but past scientific papers have focused more on tropical cyclones that caused high economic losses in eastern Japan.
Unlike previous studies, this research is unique in analyzing and ranking tropical cyclone risks by considering multiple aspects. The new tropical cyclone disaster risk ranking is expected to help develop comprehensive and inclusive disaster prevention measures that do not rely solely on economic damage.
Papers
Journal: Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society
Title: Multi-Dimensional Risk Ranking of Historical Tropical Cyclones
Authors: Md. Rezuanul Islam* and Yohei Sawada