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EM-DAT

EM-DAT is a global database on natural and technological disasters, containing essential core data on the occurrence and effects of more than 22,000 disasters in the world, from 1900 to the present day. The database is compiled from various sources, including UN agencies, non-governmental organizations, insurance companies, research institutes, and press agencies. The main objective of the database is to serve the purposes of humanitarian action at national and international levels. It is maintained by the Centre for Research on the Epidemiology of Disasters (CRED) at the School of Public Health of the Université catholique de Louvain (UCLouvain) in Brussels, Belgium.

Collection: emdat-events

A STAC collection hold all the EM-DAT events. An example of the EM-DAT collection is here.

Data

After registration and login, the data can be downloaded using the EM-DAT “Access Data” Tab or Toolbox as a flat table in Microsoft Excel format (.xlsx). The EM-DAT database is described in the Data Structure Description section. In particular, the Column Description section contains the description of each column of the public table found in the Excel file.

GraphQL API

{"Authorization": "secret"}
Query Example
query monty {
      api_version
      public_emdat(
        cursor: {limit: -1}
      ) {
        total_available
        info {
          timestamp
          filters
          cursor
        }
        data {
          disno
          classif_key
          group
          subgroup
          type
          subtype
          external_ids
          name
          iso
          country
          subregion
          region
          location
          origin
          associated_types
          ofda_response
          appeal
          declaration
          aid_contribution
          magnitude
          magnitude_scale
          latitude
          longitude
          river_basin
          start_year
          start_month
          start_day
          end_year
          end_month
          end_day
          total_deaths
          no_injured
          no_affected
          no_homeless
          total_affected
          reconstr_dam
          reconstr_dam_adj
          insur_dam
          insur_dam_adj
          total_dam
          total_dam_adj
          cpi
          admin_units
          entry_date
          last_update
        }
      }
    }
Filters in graphql

from: Int Filter records with a start_year field greater or equal to the value, excluding others.

to: Int Filter records with a start_year field lower or equal to the value, ecluding others.

iso: [String!] Filter records which occurred in the list of countries passed (passed as 3-letter codes as in the iso field of the Data type).

region_code: [Int!] Filter records which occurred in the list of regions selected, passed as codes based on the UN M49 Standard.

subregion_code: [Int!] Filter records which occurred in the list of subregions selected, passed as codes based on the UN M49 Standard.

classif: [String!] Return records with matching classif_key, to include all categories under a specific level, the end of the classif_key can be omitted or replaced by -. This wildcard/omit pattern only works from left to right. example (pattern): ["nat-"] ...will return all natural events. Classifications can be inclusively added to the filter but broader classifications will override more specific definitions. example (inclusive): ["nat-geo-mmd-", "nat-hyd-mmw-"] ...will return events from the "Mass movement (dry)" and "Mass movement (wet)" types altogether. example (override): ["nat-cli-dro-dro", "nat-cli-*"]... will ignore the first key and return all events from the "Climatological" subgroup.

include_hist: Boolean Include historical events in the results (they are by default excluded unless this parameter is passed as true).

Important

It is important to note that EM-DAT has its own specific models to classify the events and impacts.

Event Item

A EM-DAT disaster will ALWAYS produce an event STAC item as in the example for the flood in Spain from 27 Oct 2024 04 Nov 2024.

Important

As there is no permanent link to the EM-DAT event, the URl used to trace back the event should be composed with https://public.emdat.be/data/ + the disaster ID. In the example, the URL is https://public.emdat.be/data/2024-0796-ESP.

Here is a table with the fields that are mapped from the EM-DAT event to the STAC event:

STAC field EM-DAT column Description
id DisNo. Unique identifier for the event
bbox Admin Units Bounding box of the disaster geocoded from Natural Earth Data (NED)
geometry Admin Units Level 1 Admin boundaries polygons of the disaster geocoded from Natural Earth Data (NED). Note: Discard the items that has neither lat lng nor the shapefiles
collection emdat-events The collection for EM-DAT events
title Event Name Name of the disaster. Not always available
description properties.description
properties.htmldescription		 Description of the event. HTML description should be privileged over plain text description and translated to markdown
datetime start year + start month + start day Date and time of the disaster converted in UTC ISO 8601 format. Start year is mandatory while month and day might not always be available. If no start day, keep 1 (start of the month) and set the flag missing_startday to true.
start_datetime start year + start month + start day Start date of the disaster converted in UTC ISO 8601 format. Start year is mandatory while month and day might not always be available. If no start day, keep 1 (start of the month) and set the flag missing_startday to true.
end_datetime start year + start month + start day End date of the event converted in UTC ISO 8601 format
monty:country_codes[0] iso ISO3 code of the country where the event occurred. Keywords shall also contain the human readable country name
monty:hazard_codes Classification Key [EN-DAT CRED Classification Key](../../taxonomy.md#em-dat-classification-tree
via link in [links] graphql request Link to the EM-DAT event details page