Spatiotemporal distribution of flood disasters in Asia and influencing factors in 1980–2019

Floods are common natural disasters in Asia. Flood datasets from 48 countries in Asia were collected to investigate the spatiotemporal distribution and influencing factors, using the Mann–Kendall trend test and the Spearman’s rank correlation. These results show that flood occurrences and damages increased significantly in Asia, with the mortality rates and deaths decreasing. Southern and Eastern Asia are flood vulnerable regions, with Central Asia being the least flood-occurrence region, and China and India are also flood-prone countries with a largest population and land area in Asia. Least flood disasters occurred in Bahrain, Cyprus, Brunei Darussalam and Singapore, with a smaller population and land area. The spatial disparities of flood disasters were positively influenced by population and land area, and negatively influenced by urbanization rate and per capita GDP. The largest proportion of flood disasters were discovered in riverine floods, followed by flash floods, with coastal floods being the least. The highest and second-highest mortality rates were observed in flash floods and coastal floods, which showed decreasing trends, and the mortality rate of riverine floods was the lowest, with an increasing trend. The rain was the main triggering origin of floods, and tropical cyclone contributed to the second, followed by snowmelt, convective storms, and dam-break flows. This analysis can help to provide a useful insight into the formulation of flood risk maps, disaster mitigation measures and emergency management.