Sunday, February 14, 2010

Devastating, Every Way You Measure It (Edited - Corrects Data Error)

BBC presents some interesting graphics today that compare aspects of this year’s earthquake in Haiti to a pair of powerful recent earthquakes in Italy (2009) and China (2008) to explain why so many more people died in this one. It’s well worth taking a moment to look over.
But of all the data presented in the story, this struck me the most:


Look again at the ratio of the cost of this earthquake (grey) to the size of Haiti’s annual economic output (red). That’s the reason Haiti needs our help.
 (This image is significantly different from the one I originally posted. The BBC obviously made an error when they first created this graph.)
Update:
According to recent updates, it is estimated that the cost of the Haiti earthquake will likely surpass the country's meager $7B annual GDP (economic output).

1 comment:

yogita said...

imformative article good