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Disaster is where the systems meet

Part I describes systems and their couplings. It ranks no country or operator and assesses no authority.

6 min read2 figures1 table12 notesNR-SECTOR-DISASTER-GLOBAL-2026-BASELINE

Contents
  1. ·Edition home
  2. ·Executive summary
  3. 1Disaster is where the systems meet
    1. 1.1 The questions this part answers
    2. 1.2 The argument
    3. 1.3 Twenty couplings between five systems
  4. 2Key findings
  5. 3Systems and sectors at baseline
  6. 4Risks and capability
  7. 5Major cyclone landfall with lifeline and health-system failure
  8. 6Readings from the other desks
  9. 7The 2027 agenda
  10. 8Systems in depth
  11. AMethodology
  12. BData appendix
  13. CReferences and record
  14. ·Complete edition, for print

1.1The questions this part answers

Key questions

  • Where is disaster and resilience risk concentrated?
  • Which couplings carry disaster and resilience shocks into other systems?
  • Which disaster and resilience capabilities hold under compound stress?
  • What must 2027 evidence measure first?

In this part

  • Narrative
  • Headline finding
  • Lead figure
  • Five coupling chapters
  • Twelve-domain reading
  • Sector screens
  • Dependency matrix
  • Risk objects
  • Capability ladder
  • Scenario
  • Three lenses
  • Portfolio

1.2The argument

Disaster statistics usually count events, deaths and dollars. The 2026 evidence reads a disaster as the moment when exposure, vulnerability and weak capacity meet a hazard, and when one system’s failure becomes another’s2125. Floods, storms, earthquakes and heat each move through health, food, finance and infrastructure.

The year 2025 shows both sides. Recorded deaths, people affected and losses were below the 2005 to 2024 average, and no single event reached mega-disaster scale1. Yet Hurricane Melissa reached category 5 over Jamaica, two earthquakes killed more than 6,000 people in Myanmar and Afghanistan, and secondary perils drove a record 92% of insured losses146.

Warning and preparedness change outcomes. Chile ordered about 1.5 million pre-emptive evacuations after a Pacific-wide tsunami alert and recorded no major damage2. Mortality is nearly six times lower where multi-hazard warning systems are comprehensive3. Where capacity is thin, lifelines fail: hospitals became non-operational in western Jamaica6.

The burden is unequal. Poor households suffer a small share of asset losses and a large share of well-being losses12. Low- and middle-income countries hold 89% of the world’s flood-exposed people16. About 3.3 to 3.6 billion people live in contexts that are highly vulnerable to climate change25. Heat deaths are the clearest blind spot in the statistics11415.

Figure 1.1Where did disaster deaths concentrate in 2025? Recorded deaths by continent

Asia held 72.8% of recorded deaths, driven by the Myanmar and Afghanistan earthquakes, floods in Pakistan and storms in Indonesia, Sri Lanka and the Philippines. Europe recorded 25 deaths because heat deaths were not yet counted1.

ItemBar, scaled to the largest valueValue
Asia12098
Africa3090
Americas1366
Oceania28
Europe25

Source: as cited in the note to this figure. Year 2025.

Figure ID FIG-SECTOR-DISASTER-GLOBAL-2026-BASELINE-01-003

72.8%

of recorded deaths were in Asia1

65.2%

of recorded economic losses were in the Americas1

74.3%

of people affected were in Asia1

0.4%

of recorded economic losses were in Europe1

1.3Twenty couplings between five systems

The disaster and resilience-centred matrix types the twenty couplings between the five core systems, read for their disaster and resilience content. Strengths are Nexus estimates (ESTIMATED) from the cited evidence and analogue events; they set the graph that 2027 evidence will test.

Figure 1.2Couplings between the five systems

Each line is one coupling from one system to another, drawn by the strength the edition assigns. Strengths are Nexus estimates from the cited evidence and analogue events.

  • Strong
  • Moderate
  • Weak

Source: this edition’s coupling matrix (Table 1.1); status Estimated.

Table 1.1Coupling matrix: from the row system to the column system
From, toWATENEFOOHLTBIO
WAT Water·MODERATE
flood damage · low-flow derating		STRONG
floods and dry spells destroy crops		STRONG
floodwater contamination · outbreaks		MODERATE
flood pulses · habitat loss
ENE EnergyMODERATE
pumping and treatment lose power		·MODERATE
cold chain · irrigation pumping		STRONG
clinics and hospitals lose power		WEAK
fuel and land use
FOO FoodWEAK
withdrawals		WEAK
bioenergy		·MODERATE
hunger after crop loss		WEAK
land clearing
HLT HealthWEAK
outbreak control demand		WEAK
workforce		WEAK
labour		·WEAK
residues
BIO BiodiversityMODERATE
wetlands and forests buffer floods		WEAK
biomass		WEAK
pollination		WEAK
disease emergence		·
Strength: strong, moderate or weak; a Nexus estimate (status Estimated) from cited evidence and analogue events. The scale is defined in Annex A.

Transmission paths

  1. 01

    CLI → INF → HLT

    A cyclone strips roofs and power; hospitals stop working and outbreaks follow.

    Reported 2025 Melissa in Jamaica6

  2. 02

    CLI → WAT → HLT

    Floodwater contaminates supplies and spreads infection.

    Reported 2025 leptospirosis outbreak in Jamaica6

  3. 03

    CLI → FOO

    Storms and dry spells destroy crops and herds.

    Reported 2025 Jamaica and Somalia61

  4. 04

    CLI → HLT

    Extreme heat raises deaths among older people.

    Reported 2022 and 2023 in Europe1415

  5. 05

    INF → FIN

    Lifeline outages and damage cut output and strain budgets.

    Estimated Lifelines analysis for low- and middle-income countries13

Notes

Numbers are the edition’s reference numbers, so a note reads the same in every chapter. The full list, with every source and its licence, is in Annex C. Annex C, references

  1. 21Pescaroli, G. and Alexander, D., Understanding compound, interconnected, interacting, and cascading risks: a holistic framework, Risk Analysis 38(11), 2245 to 2257, 2018 (abstract opened). Wiley, Hoboken. Observation year 2018. Accessed 2026-11-03.back
  2. 25IPCC (ed.), Climate Change 2022: Impacts, Adaptation and Vulnerability, Contribution of Working Group II to the Sixth Assessment Report, Summary for Policymakers. IPCC, Geneva. Observation year 2022. Accessed 2026-11-03.back
  3. 1CRED (ed.), 2025 Disasters in numbers: Earth, Wind and Fire (EM-DAT annual report, reference date 17 March 2026). Centre for Research on the Epidemiology of Disasters, Brussels. Observation year 2025 (with 2005 to 2024 annual averages). Accessed 2026-11-03.back
  4. 4Swiss Re Institute (ed.), Wildfires, storms, floods contribute to record 92% of global insured losses in 2025 (press release on sigma 1/2026, 19 March 2026; the sigma study itself was not opened). Swiss Re, Zurich. Observation year 2025. Accessed 2026-11-03.back
  5. 6NOAA National Hurricane Center (ed.), Tropical Cyclone Report: Hurricane Melissa (revised version, damage cost updated to 26 March 2026). National Hurricane Center, Miami. Observation year 2025. Accessed 2026-11-03.back
  6. 2IDMC (ed.), Global Report on Internal Displacement 2026 (summary and full report, 12 May 2026). Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre, Geneva. Observation year 2025. Accessed 2026-11-03.back
  7. 3WMO (ed.), Early warning systems reach new heights, but critical gaps jeopardise global progress (press release on the UNDRR and WMO Global Status of Multi-Hazard Early Warning Systems 2025, 12 November 2025; the full report was not opened). World Meteorological Organization, Geneva. Observation year 2025. Accessed 2026-11-03.back
  8. 12Hallegatte, S., Vogt-Schilb, A., Bangalore, M. and Rozenberg, J., Unbreakable: Building the Resilience of the Poor in the Face of Natural Disasters. World Bank, Washington, 2017. Observation year 2016. Accessed 2026-11-03.back
  9. 16Rentschler, J., Salhab, M. and Jafino, B.A., Flood exposure and poverty in 188 countries, Nature Communications 13, 3527, 2022 (open-access full text). Springer Nature, London. Observation year 2020. Accessed 2026-11-03.back
  10. 14Ballester, J. et al., Heat-related mortality in Europe during the summer of 2022, Nature Medicine 29, 1857 to 1866, 2023 (open-access full text). Springer Nature, London. Observation year 2022. Accessed 2026-11-03.back
  11. 15Gallo, E. et al., Heat-related mortality in Europe during 2023 and the role of adaptation in protecting health, Nature Medicine 30, 3101 to 3105, 2024 (abstract opened). Springer Nature, London. Observation year 2023. Accessed 2026-11-03.back
  12. 13Hallegatte, S., Rentschler, J. and Rozenberg, J., Lifelines: The Resilient Infrastructure Opportunity. World Bank, Washington, 2019. Observation year 2019. Accessed 2026-11-03.back

Cite this chapter

Valadbaygi, S. (Ed.). (2026). Chapter 1: Disaster is where the systems meet. In Global Disaster and Resilience Risk and Resilience Report 2026: Baseline Edition, The State of Disaster Risk and Resilience Worldwide. (Baseline Edition 2026, Report No. NR-SECTOR-DISASTER-GLOBAL-2026-BASELINE) [Draft under review]. The Global Centre for Risk and Innovation (GCRI).

Every citation form of the whole report, BibTeX and RIS included, is on the edition home. Cite this report

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