Emergency Events Database (EM-DAT) data for South Africa from 1952 to 2023

Emergency events data for South Africa from 1952 to 2023 was downloaded from the Emergency Events Database (EM-DAT) (https://public.emdat.be/data). EM-DAT includes all disasters from 1900 until the present. However, this record only spans back to 1952 for disasters recorded in South Africa. EM-DAT was created with the initial support of the World Health Organisation (WHO) and the Belgian Government. The main objective of the database is to serve the purposes of humanitarian action at national and international levels. The initiative aims to rationalise decision making for disaster preparedness, as well as provide an objective base for vulnerability assessment and priority setting. EM-DAT contains essential core data on the occurrence and effects of over 21 000 mass disasters in the world from 1900 to the present day. The database is compiled from various sources, including UN agencies, non-governmental organisations, insurance companies, research institutes and press agencies. Records included in the database should meet at least one of the following criteria: 10 or more fatalities, 100 or more people affected, declaration of a state of emergency by the country or a call for international assistance. The EM-DAT Data for South Africa from 1952 to 2023 atlas displays the locations and the number of natural disasters events per South African District municipality. This atlas utilised EM-DAT data to generate map layers of geophysical, meteorological, hydrological and climatological natural disasters that have occurred in South Africa between 1952 and the present day. The data was downloaded as a spreadsheet of natural disasters of the African continent from: https://public.emdat.be/data. Applying a filter to the country column, South African records were selected. To enable for the mapping of the data, the entries listed in the location column were associated to the current 52 district municipalities of South Africa, from which the map layers were created.