Cyclonic Storm Landfalls in Bangladesh, West Bengal and Odisha, 1877-2016 : A Spatiotemporal Analysis
Recurrent cyclonic storms in the Bay of Bengal inflict massive losses on the coastal regions of Bangladesh and India. Information on occurrences and severities of cyclones is necessary for understanding household and community responses to cyclone...
| Main Authors: | , , , |
|---|---|
| Format: | Working Paper |
| Language: | English |
| Published: |
World Bank, Washington, DC
2018
|
| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: | http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/904751516818659880/Cyclonic-storm-landfalls-in-Bangladesh-west-Bengal-and-Odisha-1877-2016-a-spatiotemporal-analysis http://hdl.handle.net/10986/29280 |
| Summary: | Recurrent cyclonic storms in the Bay of
Bengal inflict massive losses on the coastal regions of
Bangladesh and India. Information on occurrences and
severities of cyclones is necessary for understanding
household and community responses to cyclone risks. This
paper constructs a georeferenced panel database that can be
used to obtain such information for Bangladesh, West Bengal,
and Odisha. Cyclone strike locations and impact zones are
analyzed for several historical periods between 1877 and
2016. The findings indicate that although the median
location has shifted eastward, there is a marked variability
in location, especially after 1960. Impacts also have varied
considerably within and across zones over time, with the
highest-impact zones in northern Odisha and the Sundarbans
region of West Bengal. The pronounced spatial and temporal
variation in cyclone impacts will provide robust controls
for comparative research on household and community
adaptation to cyclones in the study region. The methodology
developed in the paper is general and could be expanded to
an arbitrarily large set of coastal locations. |
|---|