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

Information systems have improved vastly in the last 25 years and statistical data are
now more easily available, intensified by an increasing sensitivity to disaster occurrence
and consequences. Nevertheless there are still discrepancies. An analysis of the quality
and accuracy of disaster data, performed by CRED in 2002, showed that occasionally,
for the same disaster, differences of more than 20 per cent may exist between the
quantitative data reported by the three major databases – EM-DAT (CRED), NatCat
(Munich Re) and Sigma (Swiss Re).
Despite efforts to verify and review data, the quality of disaster databases can only be
as good as the reporting system. This, combined with the different aims of the three
major disaster databases (risk and economic risk analysis for reinsurance companies,
development agenda for CRED), may explain differences between data provided for
some disasters. However, in spite of these differences, the overall trends indicated by
the three databases remain similar.
The lack of systematization and standardization of data collection is a major weakness
when it comes to long-term planning. Fortunately, due to increased pressures
for accountability from various sources, many donors and development agencies have
started paying attention to data collection and its methodologies.
Part of the solution to this data problem lies in retrospective analysis. Data are most
often publicly quoted and reported during a disaster event, but it is only long after
the event, once the relief operation is over, that estimates of damage and death can be
verified. Some data gatherers, like CRED, revisit the data; this accounts for retrospective
annual disaster figures changing one, two and sometimes even three years after the
event.
Philippe Hoyois, senior research fellow with CRED, Regina Below, manager of CRED’s
EM-DAT disaster database, and Debarati Guha-Sapir, director of CRED, prepared
the statistics annex. For further information, please contact: Centre for Research on the
Epidemiology of Disasters (CRED), School of Public Health, Catholic University of
Louvain, 30.94, Clos Chapelle-aux-Champs, 1200 Brussels, Belgium, tel.: +32 2 764
3327, fax: +32 2 764 3441, e-mail: contact@emdat.be, web site: www.emdat.be
World Disasters Report 2010 – Disaster data
ANNEX 1
165