Technological advances can cut both ways though. Whereas we definitely have more sensitive equipment inside a given building, we also have improved materials a

Technological advances can cut both ways though. Whereas we definitely have more sensitive equipment inside a given building, we also have improved materials and designs that can better-withstand weather events. I wonder to what degree events that would have formerly been billion-dollar disasters have dropped off this chart, because power plants, hospitals, etc are resisting forces that would have seriously damaged older buildings. And on the other side, I wonder to what degree our lax infrastructure spending has exacerbated the cost of these disasters. Truly if we were spending on levees and spillways at engineer-recommendations, recent hurricanes and floods would have caused notably less damage [1]. I guess my only point is that while I concur that it's careless to try to draw conclusions from this data, I don't think we can clearly assume that progress alone shows us which direction the data is skewed and why. [1] Would we have even had to open the Morganza spillway if Louisiana's levees had been maintained and updated over the years?