Known Issues and Limitations

What Difficulties May Be Encountered While Interpreting EM-DAT Data?

EM-DAT is the only comprehensive, free-access disaster loss database with effective global coverage1. However, it has limitations due to the limited number of sources and to how effectively disasters are reported worldwide. This can lead to biases in the data over which CRED may have limited control and which may be overlooked in the literature2. No current impact database is completely accurate. Nevertheless, EM-DAT remains a key resource for understanding disaster events and impacts. The United Nations emphasizes the importance of global improvements in documenting disasters in global agendas such as the Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction.

Understanding the limitations of a dataset such as EM-DAT is of paramount importance for those who wish to adequately use the data and mitigate its weaknesses for the following purposes: disaster risk management, emergency planning, scientific research, and raising public awareness. The General Issues page describes broad data quality concerns, and the Specific Biases page details the time, hazard-related, threshold, accounting, and geographic biases in EM-DAT.

  1. Mazhin, S. A., Farrokhi, M., Noroozi, M., Roudini, J., Hosseini, S. A., Motlagh, M. E., Kolivand, P., & Khankeh, H. (2021). Worldwide disaster loss and damage databases: A systematic review. Journal of Education and Health Promotion, 10(1), Article 329. https://doi.org/10.4103/jehp.jehp_1525_20 ↩︎

  2. Jones, R. L., Kharb, A., & Tubeuf, S. (2023). The untold story of missing data in disaster research: A systematic review of the empirical literature utilising the Emergency Events Database (EM-DAT). Environmental Research Letters, 18(10), Article 103006. https://doi.org/10.1088/1748-9326/acfd42 ↩︎

General Issues

Understanding Broad Data Quality Concerns in EM-DAT

Specific Biases

Understanding Particular Data Quality Concerns in EM-DAT