Urbanization and Natural Disasters

Increasing urbanization also means that the capacity for a single disaster such as an earthquake or flood to affect a huge and growing number of people is now vastly increased, even compared to a century ago. In 2011, there were 450 cities in the world with more than 1 million inhabitants, totaling 1.4 billion people.

Of these about 60 percent, with a total of some 890 million inhabitants, are located in regions exposed to at least one risk of a natural disaster. The number of people liable to be killed or displaced in each event is actually increasing year by year, despite our…