Characteristics Analysis and Assessment of Economic Damages Caused by Tropical Cyclones in Guangdong Province

Using tropical cyclone (TC) data in Guangdong Province from 1990-2015, characteristics and spatial-temporal variations of disasters caused by tropical cyclones are analyzed in this paper. The economic loss is calculated by using the disaster index, and the comprehensive disaster index model is improved. The conclusions are as follows. There are 93 TCs landing in Guangdong Province during 1990-2015, which account for 29.6% of the total landings nationwide, and 67 out of the 93 TCs have caused casualties and economic losses in Guangdong Province. The frequency of TC occurrence has little changes with time, whereas TCs of low-intensity show an obvious decreasing trend and TCs of high-intensity show an obvious increasing trend during the study period. TC occurrence in West Guangdong and the Pearl River Delta area is obviously higher than that in East and North Guangdong. Using the situation in 2015 as a reference to convert the loss index, it is found that the economic losses corresponding to each index all have a turning point in 1997, since when the economic losses have decreased greatly. There is an exponential relationship between the relative loss and TC intensity, which are positively correlated with each other. The low-intensity TCs show an obvious decreasing trend on the interannual scale, while the decreasing trend of high-intensity TCs is not significant.