Emerging economies in Asia, including India and the Philippines, face the greatest financial risk from natural disasters, an analysis suggests.
The authors based their rankings on nations’ economic activity and exposure to natural hazards, such as floods, droughts, earthquakes and cyclones.
The nations’ limited ability to recover from disasters left them exposed to severe disruption, they added.
Risk analysis firm Maplecroft compiled the Natural Hazards Risk Atlas.
Last year was deemed to be the most costly 12 months on record for natural disasters, costing US $380bn (£242bn).
The main reason for the spike was the earthquake and tsunami that struck Japan in March 2011, which was estimated to have cost US$210bn.
The authors said that the world’s key growth economies were among those most exposed to risks related to natural hazards.
“China, Mexico, India, Philippines, South Korea, Indonesia, Turkey, Bangladesh and Iran are each heavily exposed to major destructive natural hazards, such as earthquakes, flooding and tropical cyclones,” they wrote.
“Businesses operating in, investing in or sourcing from emerging economies are therefore particularly exposed… and need to build their resilience to mitigate the disruption and impact of an event.”
Lead author Helen Hodge, an associate director at Maplecroft, said Asian economies – particularly those located in the south-east of the continent – faced a variety of potentially devastating hazards.
“The Pacific Ring of Fire is a belt of seismic risk that draws in Indonesia, Philippines, Japan and Taiwan etc,” she told BBC News.
“So that exposes these nations to seismic risk, and high risk from earthquakes, but also – as we saw in Japan – the secondary risk of tsunamis.
“This combined with the hydro-meteorological risks. For example, along the Mekong Delta, we do see very high flood risks.
“There are the drought risks as well when we see Monsoons failing or arriving late.
“It is not really one risk in particular but it is the combination of multiple risks that are prominent in the areas.”
BBC © 2012