Nicole Paul

Population displacement following disasters

Over 265 million people were displaced due to disasters between 2008 and 2018. In the forthcoming years, the annual number displaced is expected to increase, driven by poorly-managed urban growth in hazard-prone areas and potentially exacerbated by climate change. Despite this scale of human impact, most disaster risk assessments focus on direct economic losses, a metric that often highlights the wealthiest as the most at-risk. However, the reality of disasters is that the poor are disproportionately affected, and mitigations informed primarily by economic loss may deepen existing inequalities. This research proposes to quantify disaster-induced displacement; a more equitable risk metric to depict the human toll of disasters.