Megacity Earthquake Risk
Tens of millions live in unreinforced buildings on known active faults.
Severity score
57.3
Severe · default weighting
Trajectory
Worsening
What this is
Istanbul, Tehran, Kathmandu, Jakarta, Manila and Lima all sit on major seismic hazards with large stocks of non-compliant construction. Retrofitting is technically understood and politically deferred almost everywhere. A single event could kill hundreds of thousands.
Score breakdown
Loss of life
54Direct and attributable mortality, normalised across annual and cumulative tolls.
Lives negatively impacted
74People displaced, injured, food-insecure, exposed or otherwise materially harmed.
Financial cost
80Direct damage, lost output and health-system spend attributable to the event.
Environmental impact
4Emissions, habitat and biodiversity loss, contamination and irreversibility.
Trajectory
60Whether the situation is escalating, and how much worse it is plausibly getting.