Data
Global natural disaster death rates
EM-DAT
What you should know about this indicator
- EM-DAT counts deaths as deceased and missing people combined, as a result of a natural disaster.
- EM-DAT defines a disaster as a situation or event which overwhelms local capacity, necessitating a request to the national or international level for external assistance; an unforeseen and often sudden event that causes great damage, destruction, and human suffering. Of all EM-DAT disasters, we select geophysical, meteorological, hydrological, and climatological events, which include droughts, earthquakes, extreme temperatures, floods, glacial lake outburst floods, mass movements, extreme weather events, volcanic activity, and wildfires.
- Drought is defined as an extended period of unusually low precipitation that produces a shortage of water for people, animals, and plants. Drought is different from most other hazards in that it develops slowly, sometimes even over the years, and its onset is generally difficult to detect.
- An earthquake is defined as a sudden movement of a block of the Earth's crust along a geological fault and associated ground shaking. The data includes the impacts of earthquake events, aftershocks and tsunamis.
- Extreme temperature is used as a general term for temperature variations above (extreme heat) or below (extreme cold) normal conditions.
- Extreme weather events include tornadoes, hailstorms, thunderstorms, sandstorms, blizzards, and extreme wind events.
- Flood is used as a general term for the overflow of water from a stream channel onto normally dry land in the floodplain (riverine flooding), higher-than-normal levels along the coast (coastal flooding) and in lakes or reservoirs as well as ponding of water at or near the point where the rain fell (flash floods).
- Volcanic activity is defined as any type of volcanic event near an opening/vent in the Earth's surface including volcanic eruptions of lava, ash, hot vapor, gas, and pyroclastic material.
- A wildfire is defined as any uncontrolled and non-prescribed combustion or burning of plants in a natural setting such as a forest, grassland, brush land or tundra, which consumes natural fuels and spreads based on environmental conditions (e.g., wind, or topography). Wildfires can be triggered by lightning or human actions.
- A dry mass movement is defined as any type of downslope movement of earth materials under hydrological dry conditions.
- A wet mass movement is defined as a type of mass movement that occur when heavy rain or rapid snow/ice melt send large amounts of vegetation, mud, or rock down a slope driven by gravitational forces.
- Glacial lake outburst floods are defined as those that occur when water held back by a glacier or moraine is suddenly released. Glacial lakes can be at the front of the glacier (marginal lake) or below the ice sheet (sub-glacial lake).
- Fog is defined as water droplets that are suspended in the air near the Earth's surface. Fog is simply a cloud that is in contact with the ground. Currently, the only fog disaster recorded in EM-DAT is the Great Smog of London in 1952.
Global natural disaster death rates
EM-DAT
Death rate per 100,000 people as a result of a natural disaster.
Source
EM-DAT, CRED / UCLouvain (2024); Population based on various sources (2023) – with major processing by Our World in Data
Last updated
April 11, 2024
Next expected update
April 2025
Date range
1900–2024
Unit
deaths per 100,000 people
Sources and processing
This data is based on the following sources
How we process data at Our World in Data
All data and visualizations on Our World in Data rely on data sourced from one or several original data providers. Preparing this original data involves several processing steps. Depending on the data, this can include standardizing country names and world region definitions, converting units, calculating derived indicators such as per capita measures, as well as adding or adapting metadata such as the name or the description given to an indicator.
At the link below you can find a detailed description of the structure of our data pipeline, including links to all the code used to prepare data across Our World in Data.
Notes on our processing step for this indicator
Disaster-related impacts from EM-DAT have been normalized by Our World in Data to provide data in terms of occurrences per 100,000 people.
Reuse this work
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Citations
How to cite this page
To cite this page overall, including any descriptions, FAQs or explanations of the data authored by Our World in Data, please use the following citation:
“Data Page: Global natural disaster death rates”, part of the following publication: Hannah Ritchie and Pablo Rosado (2022) - “Natural Disasters”. Data adapted from EM-DAT, CRED / UCLouvain, Various sources. Retrieved from https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/natural-disaster-death-rates [online resource]How to cite this data
In-line citationIf you have limited space (e.g. in data visualizations), you can use this abbreviated in-line citation:
EM-DAT, CRED / UCLouvain (2024); Population based on various sources (2023) – with major processing by Our World in DataFull citation
EM-DAT, CRED / UCLouvain (2024); Population based on various sources (2023) – with major processing by Our World in Data. “Global natural disaster death rates – EM-DAT” [dataset]. EM-DAT, CRED / UCLouvain, “Natural disasters”; Various sources, “Population” [original data]. Retrieved November 21, 2024 from https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/natural-disaster-death-rates