Guatemala

Guatemala is a country in Central America, bordered by the Gulf of Honduras and the Pacific Ocean (Encyclopædia Britannica). It is the most populated country of Central America. The south of Guatemala is a volcanic belt, composed of 27 volcanoes. The main disaster type affecting the country is flooding. Between 2000 and 2018, Guatemala was hit by 21 floods, representing close to 32% of disasters recorded. The second disaster type affecting Guatemala is storm with 12 occurrences (18% of disasters recorded). Storms are the deadliest disaster type with a total of 1 732 fatalities, representing 56% of fatalities due to disasters in Guatemala. Landslides are the second deadliest disaster type with 627 fatalities. Over the same period, droughts are the disaster type that affected the most people, with 5 680 081 people affected (52% of people affected). Volcanic activities have affected 1 727 014 persons (16% of people affected) over the same period. The deadliest disaster event between 2000 and 2018 was storm Stan in 2005, which resulted in 1 513 fatalities. The second deadliest disaster was the eruption of the Volcan de Fuego in 2018, with 425 fatalities. This event affected 1 714 387 people, making it the second disaster to affect the most people over this period. The disaster that affected the most people was a drought in 2009, with around 2 500 000 people, in relation to an El Niño event.

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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