1 Introduction

A regional disaster system is essentially the product of the interaction of humans and nature, which is composed of the disaster-formative environment, exposure, hazard, and disaster losses. It is a dynamic system with complex characteristics on the surface of the earth (Fig. 1) (Shi 1991).

Fig. 1
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Disaster structural system

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Disaster-formative environment (E): Broadly defined, it is the natural and human environments. The regional differences of disaster-formative environments not only have a profound impact on the generation of hazards but also have an obvious influence on the human casualties and property losses caused by the hazards. Hazard (H): A hazard is a process or phenomenon that may pose negative impacts on the economy, society, and ecology, including both natural factors and human factors that are associated with the natural ones. Exposure (S): It covers humanity itself and lifeline systems, production systems, cultural and social systems, and various natural resources and ecological systems. Disaster loss and effect (Ds): It includes casualties and psychological impacts, direct and indirect economic losses, building (structural) destruction, social network (non-structural) disorder, ecosystem degradation, environmental pollution, resource damages, and so on (Shi 1991, 1996, 2002, 2005, 2009, 2019).

2 Environments

The disaster-formative environment shown in this part mainly refers to the natural physical environments, namely geology, landform, climate, hydrology, vegetation, and soil.

Land elevation and slope of the terrain will affect the spatial distribution of disasters. River systems will affect the occurrence and scope of floods. Land cover and soil will directly or indirectly influence the severity of floods and droughts. In addition, climate zones directly or indirectly reflect the distribution of extreme climatic events.

3 Maps Based on Reference Data

The maps based on reference data contain World Political Map, Global Land Cover, Global Soil, Global Climate Zones, Global River Systems, Global Digital Elevation Models, Global Terrain Slope, and Global Satellite Image, and their sources are shown in Table 1.

Table 1 Maps included in the Environments section
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4 Maps

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