English: Beeswarm plot shows three different kind of engineering’s disasters (industrial, infrastructure and transport) with the highest death toll from 1900 to 2023, focusing exclusively on those resulted in more than a hundred deaths, highlighting the most devastating events in terms of human lives lost. The size of the dots represents the number of deaths, while the color represents the different continent where the disaster occurred.

Here is the list in chronological order of the annotations for industrial accidents (disaster type term used to describe a engineering accidents of an industrial nature/involving industrial buildings):

• France, 1906 - Courrières mine disaster: Europe's worst mining accident;
• Colombia, 1956 - Cali explosion: Explosion of seven army ammunition trucks that involved several industrial buildings;
• India, 1984 - Bhopal disaster:  The world's worst industrial disaster:
• Nigeria, 1998 - Jesse pipeline explosion;
• Bangladesh, 2013 - Rana Plaza collapse: The eight-storey Rana Plaza commercial building collapsed due to structural failure;

Here is the list in chronological order of the annotations for infrastructure accidents (disaster type term used to describe a engineering accidents of a non-industrial or transport nature):

• USA, 1906 - San Francisco fire: Fires following an earthquake;
• Japan, 1923 - Great kanto fire: Fires following an earthquake;
• Türkye, 1954 - Fire disaster unknown;
• Saudi Arabia, 1990 - Mecca tunnel tragedy: People were suffocated and trampled to death in a crowd crush or stampede event;
• Saudi Arabia, 2015 - Mina stampede: The deadliest Hajj disaster in history.

Here is the list in chronological order of the annotations for transport accidents (disaster type term used to describe a engineering accidents involving mechanized models of transport):

• UK, 1912 - Sinking of the Titanic;
• Italy, 1944 - Balvano train disaster: The deadliest railway accident in Italian history and one of the worst railway disasters ever;
• Philippines, 1987 - Doña Paz: The deadliest peacetime maritime disaster in history;
• Haiti, 1993 - Sinking of the ferry Neptune;
• Gambia, 2002 - Le Joola: It is thought to be the second-worst peacetime disaster in maritime history.

The data used in the graph comes from EM-DATA, The International Disaster Database.

This image has been created during "DensityDesign Integrated Course Final Synthesis Studio" at Politecnico di Milano, organized by DensityDesign Research Lab in 2024.