A global data set of tropical cyclone exposure (TCE-DAT)

DOI

Tropical cyclones (TCs) pose a major risk to societies worldwide. While data on observed cyclones tracks (location of the center) and wind speeds is publicly available these data sets do not contain information about the spatial extent of the storm and people or assets exposed. Here, we apply a simplified wind field model to estimate the areas exposed to wind speeds above 34, 64, and 96 knots. Based on available spatially-explicit data on population densities and Gross Domestic Product (GDP) we estimate 1) the number of people and 2) the sum of assets exposed to wind speeds above these thresholds accounting for temporal changes in historical distribution of population and assets (TCE-hist) and assuming fixed 2015 patterns (TCE-2015). The associated country-event level exposure data (TCE-DAT) covers the period 1950 to 2015. It is considered key information to 1) assess the contribution of climatological versus socioeconomic drivers of changes in exposure to tropical cyclones, 2) estimate changes in vulnerability from the difference in exposure and reported damages and calibrate associated damage functions, and 3) build improved exposure-based predictors to estimate higher-level societal impacts such as long-term effects on GDP, employment, or migration. We validate the adequateness of our methodology by comparing our exposure estimate to estimated exposure obtained from reported wind fields available since 1988 for the United States. We expect that the free availability of the underlying model and TCE-DAT will make research on tropical cyclone risks more accessible to non-experts and stakeholders.

Files included in the data set: (1) TCE-DAT_historic-exposure_1950-2015.csv: Exposed population and assets by event and country using historical socio-economic exposure estimates.(2) TCE-DAT_2015-exposure_1950-2015.csv: Exposed population and assets by event and country using fixed socio-economic exposure at 2015 values.(3) Data-description_TCE-DAT_2017.005.pdf: full description of the data set including information on data sources and the description of variables/ data columns

Identifier
DOI https://doi.org/10.5880/pik.2017.005
Related Identifier https://doi.org/10.1175/2008MWR2395.1
Related Identifier https://doi.org/10.1177/0959683609356587
Related Identifier https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1466-8238.2010.00587.x
Related Identifier https://doi.org/10.1175/2009BAMS2755.1
Related Identifier https://arxiv.org/abs/1610.09041
Related Identifier https://github.com/davidnbresch/climada
Related Identifier https://doi.org/10.5880/pik.2017.011
Related Identifier https://doi.org/10.5880/pik.2017.008
Related Identifier https://doi.org/10.5880/pik.2017.007
Related Identifier https://doi.org/10.5194/essd-10-185-2018
Metadata Access http://doidb.wdc-terra.org/oaip/oai?verb=GetRecord&metadataPrefix=oai_datacite&identifier=oai:doidb.wdc-terra.org:6307
Provenance
Creator Geiger, Tobias ORCID logo; Frieler, Katja ORCID logo; Bresch, David N. ORCID logo
Publisher GFZ Data Services
Publication Year 2017
Rights CC BY 4.0; http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
OpenAccess true
Representation
Language English
Resource Type Dataset
Format application/vnd.ms-excel; application/pdf
Size 1240802 Bytes; 3 Files
Discipline Earth System Research
Spatial Coverage (-180.000W, -90.000S, 180.000E, 90.000N)