Spatiotemporal patterns of global earthquake disaster impacts from a human-Earth perspective

Understanding how earthquake disaster impacts vary across space and time is essential for global disaster risk assessment and reduction planning. Using earthquake disaster records from the Emergency Events Database (EM-DAT) during 1980–2024, this study investigates temporal trends, multi-scale spatial patterns, centroid shifts, and factors associated with cross-national differences in earthquake fatalities. Temporal analyses reveal a divergence between recorded earthquake disaster frequency and impact consequences. While the number of recorded earthquake disaster events, affected population, and cumulative economic losses increased overall, mortality-related indicators declined, particularly after the early 2000s. Spatial analyses demonstrate substantial heterogeneity among continents, countries, and tectonic plates. Asia accounts for a large proportion of global earthquake disaster events and associated impacts, whereas the magnitude of impacts differs considerably among countries. At the global scale, the unweighted centroid of recorded earthquake disaster events shifted eastward across the three periods (1980–1994, 1995–2009, and 2010–2024), with consecutive inter-period displacements of 1872.4 and 770.4 km, respectively. Weighted centroids based on fatalities, affected population, and economic losses showed different spatial trajectories, indicating distinct spatial organizations of impact dimensions. The Geographical Detector results indicate that earthquake magnitude showed the highest explanatory power for spatial differences in fatalities ( q = 0.17), and interactions among factors generally enhanced spatial associations. These findings provide a global assessment of earthquake disaster impacts by integrating temporal evolution, spatial redistribution, and associated factors, offering comparative evidence for regional risk identification, exposure management, and disaster preparedness planning.