BW #92: Climate disaster costs

[Like many others, I've been getting active on BlueSky. Follow me there, at https://bsky.app/@lernerpython.com!]

COP 29 (https://unfccc.int/cop29/about-cop29), the annual UN conference on climate change, earlier on Monday of this week in Baku, Azerbaijan. Representatives from countries around the world have all come together to discuss progress toward reducing the rate of climate change, which is wreaking havoc all over the world.

Not coincidentally, the International Chamber of Commerce, representing businesses from all over the world, released a report on November 7th called, "The economist cost of extreme weather events." Their report, downloadable from https://iccwbo.org/news-publications/policies-reports/new-report-extreme-weather-events-cost-economy-2-trillion-over-the-last-decade/, shows that climate change isn't just a scientific or political issue, but a business one as well, one which is costing companies (and individuals and governments) quite a bit.

This report was based, at least in part, on information at EM-DAT (https://www.emdat.be/), which dubs itself "The international disaster database"). To get their data, you'll need to register (for free) for the site, and then get it from https://public.emdat.be/data, choosing both classifications (ecological and technological) and all regions of the world, and from all years 2000 - 2024.

The data dictionary for this information is at https://doc.emdat.be/docs/data-structure-and-content/emdat-public-table/ .

Data and seven questions

This week, I have seven tasks and questions for you. I'll be back tomorrow with my solutions.

The learning goals for this week include: Reading Excel data, grouping, linear regression, and plotting.

Here are this week's questions:

• Download the data. Set the index to use region, subregion, and country.
• How much in total economic damage, in adjusted dollars, did we see for climatalogical disasters (see "Disaster Subgroup") in the last decade (see "Start Year")? For what proportion of disasters do we even have damage amounts? Does this mean the report is likely understating or exaggerating the amounts?