EM-DAT The International Disaster Database

The EM-DAT International Disaster Database contains records of worldwide natural disasters and their health and economic impacts at a country level. Disasters are commonly considered sudden, unforeseen events which cause significant damage, destruction, and human suffering that require more than local resources to manage. They necessitate external assistance at the national or international level and may include droughts, earthquakes, floods, landslides, storms, and wildfires among others. The core data in EM-DAT are obtained from numerous sources such as UN agencies, non-governmental organizations, insurance companies, research institutes, and media outlets. The University of Louvain, Centre for Research on the Epidemiology of Disasters compiles the data, maintains the database, and freely distributes the data for non-commercial use. The database contains data from 1900 to the present that are available through three data products: 1) the primary resource - living EM-DAT Public Data, updated weekly; 2) the EM-DAT archive, pre-2000 data; and 3) The EM-DAT, Humanitarian Data Exchange, Country Profiles - yearly summaries of disaster data by country.