Investigating major factors to affect human casualties of natural disasters and reviewing recovery policies

The timing and magnitude of natural disasters are unpredictable, and thus are stochastic. Number of death and missing people (D&M) caused by natural disasters are often used to measure the magnitude of the disasters. By using statistical analysis, we investigate the relationship between the D&M inflicted and some parameters of natural disasters with case studies of earthquakes and tsunamis occurred in Japan and Indonesia from 1900 to 2012. The parameters under investigation are the epicenter location, earthquake magnitude, depth of hypocenter, and water height. We found that the earthquake magnitude and water height are positively affect the D&M inflicted, while the epicenter location and hypocenter depth have significant and negative effect. In addition, we also review the recovery process from the 2004 Aceh tsunami and the 2011 Tohoku tsunami, especially in the agriculture sector.