The epidemiological profile and morbidity-mortality patterns of technological disasters in Europe from 2000 to 2021.

OBJECTIVE

To analyse the epidemiological profile of technological disasters that occurred in Europe between 2000 and 2021, focusing on morbidity and mortality rates, as well as temporal trends.

STUDY DESIGN

A retrospective descriptive analysis was conducted using data from EM-DAT, DesInventar, NatCAt, and Sigma.

METHODS

The disasters were classified into transport, industrial, and miscellaneous accidents. Statistical analyses were conducted to examine the frequencies, trends, and correlations among types of disasters. The Mann-Kendall test was used to determine the presence or absence of temporal trends, while the Augmented Dickey-Fuller test was used to check for stationarity in the time series. Exponential smoothing was used to forecast the annual number of technological disasters up to the year 2032.

RESULTS

A total of 505 technological disasters were recorded. Out of the total number of accidents, 332 (65.74 %) were transport accidents, 66 (13.07 %) were industrial accidents, and 107 (21.19 %) were miscellaneous accidents. The study found a statistically significant decreasing trend for all technological disasters (tau = -0.649; p < 0.000).

CONCLUSIONS

The total number of technological disasters and each of their types decreased. However, there were no discernible trends in the average mortality rate, the average rate of affected people, or the average rate of injuries per year.