World Disasters Report 2010 - International Federation of Red Cross ...

�� Miscellaneous accidents: Collapse of domestic / non-industrial structures; explosions;
fires.
In Tables 1–13, ‘disasters’ refer to disasters with a natural or a technological trigger
only, and do not include wars, conflict-related famines, diseases or epidemics. The
classification of countries as ‘very high’, ‘high’, ‘medium’ or ‘low human development’
is based on UNDP’s 2009 Human Development Index (HDI). For a small number of
countries, which do not appear in the HDI, the World Bank’s classification of economies
by the countries’ level of income is used as reference (‘high’, ‘upper middle’ ‘lower
middle’ and ‘low’).
In both EM-DAT and the tables in this annex, data are considered at country level for
many reasons, including the fact that it is at this level that they are reported most of the
time and also due to issues regarding possible aggregation and disaggregation of data.
For droughts or food insecurities, which are often multi-year events, their impact over
time is taken into account.
Bearing in mind that data on deaths and economic damage from drought are infrequently
reported, CRED has adopted the following rules regarding data for droughts:
�� The total number of deaths reported for a drought is divided by the number of
years for which the drought persists. The resulting number is registered for each
year of the drought’s duration.
�� The same calculation is done for the reported economic damages.
�� For the total number of people reported to be affected, CRED considers that the
same number is affected each year that the disaster persists.
Some disasters begin at the end of a year and may last some weeks or months into the
following year. In such case, CRED has adopted the following rules:
�� With regard to the number of people reported affected, the total number is
recorded for both the start year and the end year.
�� For the number of people reported killed, CRED distinguishes between suddenonset
disasters (earthquakes, flash floods, landslides, etc.) and slow-onset disasters
(wildfires, some floods, extreme temperatures, etc.) as follows:
– Sudden-onset disasters – all those killed are registered according to the start year
of the disaster
– Slow-onset disasters – the total of all those killed is divided by two and a half is
attributed to each year of persistence.
�� Reported economic damages are always attributed to the end year of the disaster.
This is because damage is related to both the strength of a disaster and its duration.
By using these rules, some data bias correction is attempted. However, they are far
from perfect and CRED will try to improve them, as well as the database as a whole,
in the future.
World Disasters Report 2010 – Disaster data
ANNEX 1
163