Box 4.2 Understanding loss and risk from the bottom up: national loss accounting
To uncover extensive risks, an increasing number of countries around the world are adopting a simple and well-defined methodology to report, analyse and display disaster occurrence and losses at the local level through a standard definition of hazards, impacts and other indicators. 3 Because the loss data is captured at the level of local administrative units, this makes it possible to record losses associated with huge numbers of small extensive disasters that are not internationally reported and thus do not appear in other disaster databases. In a pattern that resembles the growth of computer processing power, the number of countries systematically collecting disaster loss data has roughly doubled every two years since these efforts began in Latin America in the 1990s. GAR15 features data collected using the same methodology and parameters in 82 countries and 3 states (Tamil Nadu and Odisha in India, and Zanzibar in Tanzania). Countries that have published data sets in the last two years, including: Comoros, Madagascar, Mauritius and Seychelles in the Indian Ocean; Morocco and Tunisia in North Africa; Niger, Senegal, Sierra Leone and Togo in West Africa; Barbados, Grenada, Saint Lucia, Saint Kitts and Nevis, Saint Vincent, and Trinidad and Tobago in the Caribbean; Cambodia, Pakistan and the State of Palestine in Asia; and Albania, Serbia, Spain and Turkey in Europe (Figure 4.2). Figure 4.2 Increase in number of national loss databases featured in Global Assessment Reports
(Source: UNISDR with data from national loss databases.)
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Part I - Chapter 4