Colombia

Colombia is located in the north-western part of the South American continent, bordered by the Caribbean Sea and the Pacific Ocean. The relief is marked by the Andean cordillera in the western part of the country. Most of the Colombian population is living in the interior highlands (Encyclopædia Britannica). The main disaster type affecting the country is flooding. Between 2000 and 2018, Colombia was hit by 47 floods, representing close to 57% of disasters recorded. The second disaster type affecting Colombia is landslide, with 13 occurrences (16%). Floods are the deadliest disaster type with a total of 1 954 fatalities, representing 66% of fatalities due to disasters in Colombia. Landslides resulted in 913 fatalities. Combined, floods and landslides are responsible for 97% of fatalities due to disasters in Colombia. Flooding is by far the disaster type that affected the most people over the same period, with 10 097 757 affected people (98.4 %). The deadliest disaster between 2000 and 2018 was a flood stated in 2010, which resulted in 418 fatalities. This event was also the one that affected the highest number of people in Colombia, with 2 791 536 people affected.

Mapping natural disasters from 2000 until 2018

Proportional Symbol Map

Number of times a region has been affected by disasters.

A proportional symbol map uses simple map symbols (usually a circle or square) that vary in size to represent a quantitative value found at that location.

Choropleth Map

Number of disasters per 1 000 km².

In a choropleth map, divided geographical areas or regions are coloured, shaded or patterned in relation to a statistical variable that represents an aggregate summary of a geographic characteristic within each area.

Kernel Density Map

Kernel density estimation (quadratic kernel).

The kernel density map produces a processed, smoothed visualization of the density of occurrences in the neighbourhood of each resulting map cell. The kernel density map makes it possible to see a concentration of event occurrences. A qualitative scale is used here to ease interpretation.

How to access the EM-DAT database

Go to public.emdat.be

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