Lightning is the discharge of electricity from thunderstorms. Ground strikes can cause significant damage to property and infrastructure, and injure or kill people and livestock. Lightning is often associated with other severe weather events, such as strong wind gusts. Thunderstorms may increase in frequency and intensity with climate change. This dataset relates to the "Lightning" measure on the Environmental Indicators, Te taiao Aotearoa website.

This dataset contains the number of fatalities due to flood, debris flow, landslide, rockfall, windstorm, lightning, ice avalanche, earthquake and other processes like roof avalanche or lacustrine tsunami for each year since 1946. The following information is contained (by column and column title):

• year
• total number of hazard fatalities
• number of fatalities by flood (German: Hochwasser, Überschwemmung). Flood includes people drowned in flooded or inundated areas or carried away in streams under high-water conditions.
• number of fatalities by debris flow (German: Murgang).
• number of fatalities by landslide (German: Erdrutsch). Landslide includes people killed by landslides and hillslope debris flows (German: Hangmure).
• number of fatalities by rockfall (German: Steinschlag, Fels- und Bergsturz).
• number of fatalities by windstorm (German: Sturm). Windstorm includes people killed by falling objects or trees during very strong wind conditions and people who drowned in lakes because their boat capsized during such conditions.
• number of fatalities by lightning (German: Blitz).
• number of fatalities by ice avalanche (German: Eislawine).
• number of fatalities by earthquake (German: Erdbeben).
• number of fatalities by other processes like roof avalanche, lacustrine tsunami (German: andere Prozesse wie Dachlawine, Tsunami im See).

The data was collected based on newspaper research. For more information please refer to

Badoux, A., Andres, N., Techel, F., and Hegg, C.: Natural hazard fatalities in Switzerland from 1946 to 2015, Nat. Hazards Earth Syst. Sci., 16, 2747-2768, https://doi.org/10.5194/nhess-16-2747-2016, 2016.

The data collection is financed by the FOEN (with exception of the collection of the avalanche fatalities). The data contains the official statistics of the FOEN on fatalities due to flood, debris flow, landslide, rock fall and avalanche.

Restrictions: The data set is not complete. Only fatalities in or around settlements and on open transportation routes are included. More precisely, fatalities were not collected, when persons exposed themselves to a great danger on purpose. Or fatalities during leisure activities which are connected to a higher risk were not included (this includes e.g. canoeing or river surfing during flood, canyoning, mountaineering, climbing, walking or driving on a closed road).

Fatalities by avalanches are collected at the WSL Institute for Snow and Avalanche Research SLF. You can download the avalanche fatalities per hydrological year here and per calendar year here. For a direct comparison with the fatalities presented here, please download the data set with the calendar years and do not consider fatalities in the backcountry (tour) or in terrain close to ski areas (offpiste).