EM-DAT: The Centre for Research on the Epidemiology of Disasters (CRED) International Disaster Database

Since 1988 the WHO Collaborating Centre for Research on the
Epidemiology of Disasters (CRED) has been maintaining an Emergency
Events Database - EM-DAT. EM-DAT was created with the initial support
of the WHO and the Belgian Government. EM-DAT is supported by the
U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) Office of
U.S. Foreign Disaster Assistance (OFDA).

The main objective of the database is to serve the purposes of
humanitarian action at national and international levels. It is an
initiative aimed to rationalise decision making for disaster
preparedness, as well as providing an objective base for vulnerability
assessment and priority setting. For example, it allows on to decide
whether floods in a given country are more significant in terms of its
human impact than earthquakes or whether a country is more vulnerable
than another for computing resources is.

EMDAT contains essential core data on the occurrence and effects of
over 12,000 mass disasters in the world from 1900 to present. The
database is compiled from various sources, including UN agencies,
non-governmental organisations, insurance companies, research
institutes and press agencies. The database includes disaster
information for countries and regions classified by disaster type
including natural, technological and conflict disasters. Types of
information include estimated damage, number of person killed or
injured, persons displaced or affected, location, geospatial
coordinates and scale.