Emergency Events Database Research Articles

Do Individuals Living with HIV know how to Access Resources in Order to Safeguard their Health in the Event of Statewide Emergency Situations?

There has been a significant increase in the number and severity of disasters over the past decades as is noted in the Centre for Research on the Epidemiology of Disasters’ Emergency Events Database (EM-DAT). Access to care during such events is critical for vulnerable populations, especially those with communicable diseases such as HIV. As such, inability to access antiretroviral medications, safe food, housing, and transportation may disproportionately affect People Living with HIV (PLWH). This is especially so, because PLWH are both more likely than the general population to experience adverse effects from disasters and face multiple stigmatizing barriers to care. Methods: A cross-sectional survey was self-administered to a convenience sample of 53 volunteers who were in attendance at a World AIDS Day event in Washington, DC. This pilot study utilized scenarios to examine what PLWH would do if they ran out of medication and food in the event of an emergency situation such as a natural disaster or catastrophic event. The survey also asked about PLWHs’ housing and transportation concerns in emergency situations. Results: Analyses revealed that all areas assessed would pose a difficulty for PLWHs. Furthermore, inability to access medication (88%) and the lack of knowledge about how to access medication (92%) during a natural disaster were consistently stubborn issues. Conclusions: Findings suggested that this cohort of PLWH in DC might not be prepared for emergencies. Similarly, they do not know where to access the assistance needed to prevent health complications during emergencies and disaster situations. The results highlighted some reasons for vulnerability of PLWH in this geographical location. More planning and education are needed to safeguard the wellbeing of PLWH, lessen PLWH’s health vulnerabilities, and enhance supportive services for PLWH and their caregivers during emergency or disaster situations. Significant implications are discussed for future prevention, intervention, practices, and research as the nation moves to address the goal of “Ending HIV by 2030.”

Flood-induced mortality across the globe: Spatiotemporal pattern and influencing factors

Impacts of floods on human society have been drawing increasing human concerns in recent years. In this study, flood observations from EM-DAT (Emergency Events Database) and DFO (Dartmouth Flood Observatory) datasets were analyzed to investigate frequency and intensity of floods, and flood-induced mortality, flood-affected population as well during 1975–2016 across the globe. Results indicated that: (1) occurrence rate of floods, flood-induced mortality and flood-affected population were generally increasing globally. However, flood-induced mortality and flood-affected people per flood event were in slight decrease, indicating that flood-induced mortality and flood-affected people due to increased floods exceeded those by individual flood event; (2) annual variation of mortality per flood event is highly related to floods with higher intensity. Specifically, the flood frequency and flood-induced mortality are the largest in Asia, specifically in China, India, Indonesia and Philippine; while significantly increased flood-affected population and mean annual mortality was detected in China, USA and Australia; (3) tropical cyclones (TC) are closely related to flood-induced mortality in parts of the countries along the western coast of the oceans. The frequency of channel floods in these regions is the largest and large proportion of flood-induced deaths and the highest flood-induced mortality can be attributed to TC-induced flash floods; (4) Population density and GDP per unit area are in significantly positive correlation with the number of flood-related victims per unit area, number of deaths and economic losses with exception of low-income countries. However, the flood-affected population and flood-induced mortality increase with decrease of per capita GDP; while the per capita economic loss increases with the increase of per capita GDP, indicating that the higher the population density and GDP per unit for a region, the higher sensitivity of this area to flood hazards.

Exploring Droughts and Floods and Their Association with Cholera Outbreaks in Sub-Saharan Africa: A Register-Based Ecological Study from 1990 to 2010.

.Cholera outbreaks in Africa have been attributed to both droughts and floods, but whether the risk of a cholera outbreak is elevated during droughts is unknown. We estimated the risk of cholera outbreaks during droughts and floods compared with drought- and flood-free periods in 40 sub-Saharan African countries during 1990–2010 based on data from Emergency Events Database: the Office of Foreign Disaster Assistance /Centre for Research on the Epidemiology of Disasters International Disaster Database (www.emdat.be). A cholera outbreak was registered in one of every three droughts and one of every 15 floods. We observed an increased incidence rate of cholera outbreaks during drought periods (incidence rate ratio [IRR] = 4.3, 95% confidence interval [CI] = 2.9–7.2) and during flood periods (IRR = 144, 95% CI = 101–208) when compared with drought/flood-free periods. Floods are more strongly associated with cholera outbreaks, yet the prevalence of cholera outbreaks is higher during droughts because of droughts’ long durations. The results suggest that droughts in addition to floods call for increased cholera preparedness.

Comparison of the Performance of Six Drought Indices in Characterizing Historical Drought for the Upper Blue Nile Basin, Ethiopia

The Upper Blue Nile (UBN) basin is less-explored in terms of drought studies as compared to other parts of Ethiopia and lacks a basin-specific drought monitoring system. This study compares six drought indices: Standardized Precipitation Index (SPI), Standardized Precipitation Evaporation Index (SPEI), Evapotranspiration Deficit Index (ETDI), Soil Moisture Deficit Index (SMDI), Aggregate Drought Index (ADI), and Standardized Runoff-discharge Index (SRI), and evaluates their performance with respect to identifying historic drought events in the UBN basin. The indices were calculated using monthly time series of observed precipitation, average temperature, river discharge, and modeled evapotranspiration and soil moisture from 1970 to 2010. The Pearson’s correlation coefficients between the six drought indices were analyzed. SPI and SPEI at 3-month aggregate period showed high correlation with ETDI and SMDI (r > 0.62), while SPI and SPEI at 12-month aggregate period correlate better with SRI. The performance of the six drought indices in identifying historic droughts: 1973–1974, 1983–1984, 1994–1995, and 2003–2004 was analyzed using data obtained from Emergency Events Database (EM-DAT) and previous studies. When drought onset dates indicated by the six drought indices are compared with that in the EM-DAT. SPI, and SPEI showed early onsets of drought events, except 2003–2004 drought for which the onset date was unavailable in EM-DAT. Similarly, ETDI, SMDI and SRI-3 showed early onset for two drought events and late onsets in one-drought event. In contrast, ADI showed late onsets for two drought events and early onset for one drought event. None of the six drought indices could individually identify the onsets of all the selected historic drought events; however, they may identify the onsets when combined by considering several input variables at different aggregate periods.

An Evaluation of Global Hazard Communication with Ethical Considerations.

Introduction: Despite the large number of hazards occurring every year, it is often only the most catastrophic and rapidly occurring hazards that are covered in detail by major news outlets. This can result in an under-reporting of smaller or slowly evolving hazards such as drought. Furthermore, the type or country in which the hazard occurs may have a bearing on whether it receives media coverage. The Public Health England (PHE) global weekly hazards bulletin is designed to inform subscribers of hazards occurring in the world in a given week regardless of location or type of natural hazard. This paper will aim to examine whether the bulletin is reporting these events in a way that matches a number of international disaster databases. It will also seek to answer if biases within media outlets reporting of an event is impacting on the types of hazards and events being covered. Through the analysis of data collected, it is hoped to be able to consider the ethical implications of such a bulletin service and provide recommendations on how the service might be improved in the future.Methods: The study used a year’s worth of global hazards bulletins sent by Public Health England. These bulletins aim to communicate hazards in the form of compiled articles from news outlets around the world. Data from these bulletins was collected and analysed by hazard type and the country in which hazards occurred. It was then compared to recognised hazard databases to assess similarities and differences in the hazards being reported via media or through dedicated hazard databases. The recognised hazard databases were those run by the Emergency Events Database (EM-DAT), European Civil Protection and Humanitarian Aid Operations (ECHO) and National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) respectively.Results: The PHE bulletin overall was found to be comparable to other global hazard or disaster databases in terms of hazards included by both country and type of hazard. The PHE bulletin covered a greater number of unique hazard events than the other databases and also covered more types of hazard. It also gave more frequent coverage to the United Kingdom and Canada than the other databases, with other countries appearing less frequently. More generally, the PHE bulletin and the databases it was compared to appear to focus more on hazards either occurring in developed countries or fast-onset ones such as landslides or floods. On the other hand, slow-onset hazards such as drought or those occurring in developing countries appear to be under-reported and are given less importance in both the bulletin and databases.Discussion and recommendations: We recommend that the resources compared review their inclusion criteria and assess whether the discrepancies in hazard type and country can be ratified through changes in how hazards are assessed for inclusion. More research should be undertaken to assess whether similar findings arise when comparing databases in other areas within the remit of public health.

The relevance of flood hazards and impacts in Turkey: What can be learned from different disaster loss databases?

Turkey has been severely affected by many natural hazards, in particular earthquakes and floods. Especially over the last two decades, these natural hazards have caused enormous human and economic damage. Although there is a large body of literature on earthquake hazards and risks in Turkey, comparatively little is known about flood hazards and risks. Therefore, this study aims to investigate the severity of flooding in comparison with other natural hazards in Turkey and to analyse the flood patterns by providing an overview of the temporal and spatial distribution of flood losses. These will act as a metric for the societal and economic impacts of flood hazards in Turkey. For this purpose, Turkey Disaster Database (TABB) was used for the years 1960–2014. As input for more detailed event analyses, the most severe flood events in Turkey for the same time interval will also be retrieved. Sufficiency of the TABB database to achieve the main aim of the study in terms of data quality and accuracy was also discussed. The TABB database was analysed and reviewed through comparison, mainly with the Emergency Events Database (EM-DAT), the Global Active Archive of Large Flood Events—Dartmouth Flood Observatory database, news archives and the scientific literature, with a focus on listing the most severe flood event. The comparative review of these data sources reveals big mismatches in the flood data, i.e. the reported number of events, number of affected people and economic loss all differ dramatically. Owing to the fact that the TABB is the only disaster loss database for Turkey, it is important to explore the reasons for the mismatches between TABB and the other sources with regard to aspects of accuracy and data quality. Therefore, biases and fallacies in the TABB loss data are also discussed. The comparative TABB database analyses show that large mismatches between global and national databases can occur. Current global and national databases for monitoring losses from national hazards suffer from a number of limitations, which in turn could lead to misinterpretations of the loss data. Since loss data collection is gaining more and more attention, e.g. in the Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction 2015–2030, this study offers a framework for developing guidelines for the Turkey Disaster Database (TABB), implications on how to standardize national loss databases and implement across the other hazard events in Turkey.

Differential mortality patterns from hydro-meteorological disasters: Evidence from cause-of-death data by age and sex

This paper evaluates the heterogeneous impact of hydro-meteorological disasters on populations along the dimensions of age, sex, and human development. The analysis is based on previously untapped cause-of-death data over the period 1995– 2011 that were obtained from the WHO mortality database, and were based on the civil registration records of 63 countries/territories. Using these data, we evaluate patterns of mortality related to meteorological disasters in the spirit of model life tables.We observe that mortality rates from hydro-meteorological disasters for men are consistently higher than for women across all age groups, and that the differential by sex is larger for adults than for young children or the elderly. Furthermore, the sex differential in mortality becomes smaller with improvements in human development. Comparing our disaster fatalities with those recorded in the Emergency Events Database (EM-DAT), we find that the number of deaths from hydro-meteorological disasters was underestimated in the WHO database, especially in the case of highimpact events. In the paper we discuss issues of data quality and data harmonisation for the study of the differential demographic impact of natural disasters. One of our main goals is to stimulate an interdisciplinary debate in this area.

Societal and economic impacts of flood hazards in Turkey – an overview

Turkey has been severely affected by many natural hazards, in particular earthquakes and floods. Although there is a large body of literature on earthquake hazards and risks in Turkey, comparatively little is known about flood hazards and risks. Therefore, with this study it is aimed to investigate flood patterns, societal and economic impacts of flood hazards in Turkey, as well as providing a comparative overview of the temporal and spatial distribution of flood losses by analysing EM-DAT (Emergency Events Database) and TABB (Turkey Disaster Data Base) databases on disaster losses throughout Turkey for the years 1960-2014. The comparison of these two databases reveals big mismatches of the flood data, e.g. the reported number of events, number of affected people and economic loss, differ dramatically. With this paper, it has been explored reasons for mismatches. Biases and fallacies for loss data in the two databases has been discussed as well. Since loss data collection is gaining more and more attention, e.g. in the Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction 2015-2030 (SFDRR), the study could offer a base-work for developing guidelines and procedures on how to standardize loss databases and implement across the other hazard events, as well as substantial insights for flood risk mitigation and adaptation studies in Turkey and will offer valuable insights for other (European) countries.

Differential mortality patterns from hydro-meteorological disasters: Evidence from cause-of-death data by age and sex

This paper evaluates the heterogeneous impact of hydro-meteorological disasters on populations along the dimensions of age, sex, and human development. The analysis is based on previously untapped cause-of-death data over the period 1995– 2011 that were obtained from the WHO mortality database, and were based on the civil registration records of 63 countries/territories. Using these data, we evaluate patterns of mortality related to meteorological disasters in the spirit of model life tables.We observe that mortality rates from hydro-meteorological disasters for men are consistently higher than for women across all age groups, and that the differential by sex is larger for adults than for young children or the elderly. Furthermore, the sex differential in mortality becomes smaller with improvements in human development. Comparing our disaster fatalities with those recorded in the Emergency Events Database (EM-DAT), we find that the number of deaths from hydro-meteorological disasters was underestimated in the WHO database, especially in the case of highimpact events. In the paper we discuss issues of data quality and data harmonisation for the study of the differential demographic impact of natural disasters. One of our main goals is to stimulate an interdisciplinary debate in this area.

How useful and reliable are disaster databases in the context of climate and global change? A comparative case study analysis in Peru

Abstract. Damage caused by weather- and climate-related disasters have increased over the past decades, and growing exposure and wealth have been identified as main drivers of this increase. Disaster databases are a primary tool for the analysis of disaster characteristics and trends at global or national scales, and they support disaster risk reduction and climate change adaptation. However, the quality, consistency and completeness of different disaster databases are highly variable. Even though such variation critically influences the outcome of any study, comparative analyses of different databases are still rare to date. Furthermore, there is an unequal geographic distribution of current disaster trend studies, with developing countries being underrepresented. Here, we analyze three different disaster databases in the developing-country context of Peru: a global database (Emergency Events Database: EM-DAT), a multinational Latin American database (DesInventar) and a national database (Peruvian National Information System for the Prevention of Disasters: SINPAD). The analysis is performed across three dimensions: (1) spatial scales, from local to regional (provincial) and national scale; (2) timescales, from single events to decadal trends; and (3) disaster categories and metrics, including the number of single disaster event occurrence, or people killed and affected. Results show limited changes in disaster occurrence in the Cusco and ApurÍmac regions in southern Peru over the past four decades but strong positive trends in people affected at the national scale. We furthermore found large variations of the disaster metrics studied over different spatial and temporal scales, depending on the disaster database analyzed. We conclude and recommend that the type, method and source of documentation should be carefully evaluated for any analysis of disaster databases; reporting criteria should be improved and documentation efforts strengthened.

When “Nature” Strikes: A Sociology of Climate Change and Disaster Vulnerabilities in Asia

Home to 60 percent of the world's population, Asia accounts for 85 percent of those killed and affected globally by disaster events in 2011. Using an integrated sociological framework comprised of the pressure and release (PAR) model and the double-risk society hypothesis, and drawing on data obtained from the Emergency Events Database (EM-DAT), PreventionWeb, and the IPCC special report on extreme events, this article offers a sociological understanding of disaster development and recovery in Asia. The particular focus is on seven Asian countries, namely, China, India, Indonesia, Japan, Thailand, Taiwan, and Vietnam. Rather than treating disasters entirely as “natural” events caused by “violent forces of nature”, we emphasize various ways in which social systems create disaster vulnerability. We argue that existing disaster mitigation and adaptation strategies in Asia that focus almost entirely on the natural and technological aspects of hazards have serious limitations, as they ignore the root causes of disaster vulnerabilities, such as limited access to power and resources. This article therefore recommends a holistic approach to disaster management and mitigation that takes into consideration the various larger social, political, and economic conditions and contexts.

Power Law Behavior and Self-Similarity in Modern Industrial Accidents

Advances in technology have produced more and more intricate industrial systems, such as nuclear power plants, chemical centers and petroleum platforms. Such complex plants exhibit multiple interactions among smaller units and human operators, rising potentially disastrous failure, which can propagate across subsystem boundaries. This paper analyzes industrial accident data-series in the perspective of statistical physics and dynamical systems. Global data is collected from the Emergency Events Database (EM-DAT) during the time period from year 1903 up to 2012. The statistical distributions of the number of fatalities caused by industrial accidents reveal Power Law (PL) behavior. We analyze the evolution of the PL parameters over time and observe a remarkable increment in the PL exponent during the last years. PL behavior allows prediction by extrapolation over a wide range of scales. In a complementary line of thought, we compare the data using appropriate indices and use different visualization techniques to correlate and to extract relationships among industrial accident events. This study contributes to better understand the complexity of modern industrial accidents and their ruling principles.

Mortality due to disasters in Brazil: what the data reveals

This work presents and analyzes the main databases on mortality due to disasters in Brazil: EM-DAT - Emergency Events Database and the Brazilian Atlas of Natural Disasters, as well as the Mortality Information System (SIM, Ministry of Health) and the Yearbook of Natural Disasters (Ministry of National Integration). These databases were addressed using two basic methodological procedures: descriptive analysis of systematic information and comparative analysis, by means of the construction of tables that helped to analyze the information selected. The comparison revealed that with the current databases it is not possible to affirm if disasters and mortality due to disasters are increasing in Brazil, since there are variations in the intensity of the events that occur each year. The information available shows the importance of the mega disaster that occurred in the mountainous region of Rio de Janeiro in 2011, especially in the municipality of Nova Friburgo. In this case the disaster affected the various age groups in both sexes in different ways: the 5 to 9-year-old age group was the most affected among men and women, as well as the 20 to 24-year-old age group (for women) and the 30 to 34-year-old age group (for men).

DISASTER: a GIS database on hydro-geomorphologic disasters in Portugal

In the last century, Portugal was affected by several natural disasters of hydro-geomorphologic origin that often caused high levels of destruction. However, data on past events related to floods and landslides were scattered. The Disaster project aims to bridge the gap on the availability of a consistent and validated hydro-geomorphologic database for Portugal, by creating, disseminating and exploiting a GIS database on disastrous floods and landslides for the period 1865–2010, which is available in http://riskam.ul.pt/disaster/en . Data collection is steered by the concept of disaster used within the Disaster project. Therefore, any hydro-geomorphologic case is stored in the database if the occurrence led to casualties or injuries, and missing, evacuated or homeless people, independently of the number of people affected. The sources of information are 16 national, regional and local newspapers that implied the analysis of 145,344 individual newspapers. The hydro-geomorphologic occurrences were stored in a database containing two major parts: the characteristics of the hydro-geomorphologic case and the corresponding damages. In this work, the main results of the Disaster database are presented. A total of 1,621 disastrous floods and 281 disastrous landslides were recorded and registered in the database. These occurrences were responsible for 1,251 dead people. The obtained results do not support the existence of any exponential increase in events in time, thus contrasting with the picture provided to Portugal by the Emergency Events Database. Floods were more frequent during the period 1936–1967 and occurred mostly from November to February. Landslides were more frequent in the period 1947–1969 and occurred mostly from December to March.

Spatiotemporal changes of global extreme temperature events (ETEs) since 1981 and the meteorological causes

Of the various types of disasters caused by extreme climate and weather, extreme temperature events (ETEs) have led to a heightened awareness due to their increasing frequency, intensity, widespread distribution, and severe health impacts. Although many previous studies have surveyed the severe impacts of specific ETEs, few systematic studies have analyzed the temporal trends and the spatial patterns of this type of ETEs at the global scale. In the present study, disaster data from 1981 to 2010 compiled by Emergency Events Database were used to obtain a global view of the distribution of and the changes in the recorded ETEs. In addition, the daily maximum/minimum temperature data provided by National Centers for Environmental Prediction /Department of Energy Reanalysis 2 were used to explore the potential meteorological causes of these events. The results showed 2.7 and 6.4 increases in the frequencies of heat waves and cold spells per decade, respectively, since the 1980s. However, a large regional variability was found worldwide. Moreover, more than 40 % of the recorded ETEs occurred in Europe, and Asia experienced 33 and 26 % of the heat wave and cold spell events, respectively. Additionally, the global pattern for the occurrence frequency of ETEs in recent decades could be largely ascribed to the meteorological indexes: the heat stress index (HSI) and the cold stress index (CSI). The frequency of heat wave events increased from 1981 to 2010, and this trend is consistent with the increase in the HSI. However, the cold spell events did not appear to be reduced, as demonstrated by the disaster records, and this finding is inconsistent with the CSI trend. This result indicates that other factors also influence the occurrence of disaster events.

Development of a Combined Drought Indicator to detect agricultural drought in Europe

Abstract. This study proposes a drought indicator that combines the Standardized Precipitation Index (SPI), the anomalies of soil moisture and the anomalies of the fraction of Absorbed Photosynthetically Active Radiation (fAPAR). Computed at the European level, the Combined Drought Indicator (CDI) gives a synthetic and synoptic overview of the drought situation using a classification scheme. Derived from the integration of the three individual indices, this classification scheme is composed of three warning levels: "watch" when a relevant precipitation shortage is observed, "warning" when this precipitation shortage translates into a soil moisture anomaly, and "alert" when these two conditions are accompanied by an anomaly in the vegetation condition. The design of the CDI includes the study of the relationship between the three individual indices. To achieve this, the SPI-3 (3-month SPI) was computed using the precipitation data obtained from a set of weather stations located in different agricultural areas of Europe, while the soil moisture and fAPAR data were extracted from the pixels of the respective grids surrounding these stations. The CDI is assessed for the main drought episodes of Europe between 2000 and 2011, using reported data from different sources, such as the EM-DAT Emergency Events Database and Eurostat annual yield estimates. The capability of the CDI to serve for drought early warning is evaluated as well as its robustness against false alarms. The indicator has been spatially implemented for the entire continent using different information layers of the European Drought Observatory. These layers correspond to SPI-3 grids derived from interpolated weather station precipitation data, anomalies of fAPAR from the MERIS Global Vegetation Index and anomalies of soil moisture obtained using the LISFLOOD distributed hydrological model. Maps of the CDI obtained for the European drought event in spring 2011 are shown and discussed, evaluating its operational applicability. To conclude, the main limitations of the indicator are presented and possible avenues for improvement are discussed.

The Great Indian Invisible Railroad Disaster

doi:10.1017/S1049023X12000544 As traffic accidents occupy center stage in injury discussions, Forsberg and colleagues’ report ‘‘One hundred years of railway disasters and recent trends’’ made interesting reading. With trains traveling at higher and higher speeds, the authors correctly recommend injury prevention and safety mechanisms to decrease the risk of mass-casualty events. The robust Emergency Events Database (EM-DAT) of the Centre for Research on the Epidemiology of Disasters (CRED) describes a railway disaster as an event during which $10 people are killed and/or $100 are non-fatally injured. Considering this definition, the figures represented in Forsberg et al may represent the ‘‘tip of the iceberg’’ rather than a complete picture of railway injuries in the developing world. As emphasized by the authors, India accounts for 838 billion passenger-kilometers traveled per year, and rail transportation remains one of the safest ways to travel (besides being environmentally friendly) in the densely populated developing world. In 2010, fatalities due to road traffic accidents (34.8% of all accidental deaths in India) were five times higher than those due to railway fatalities (7.3%). However, railroad crash disasters accounted for just 0.9% of all fatalities, while ‘‘other’’ railway fatalities were seven times more common (6.4%). These ‘‘other’’ events involved individuals who had fallen out of moving carriages, committed suicide by jumping in front of trains, or who had been killed while alighting or boarding from platforms, run over by trains while crossing the tracks, or hit by electric poles while hanging onto railway coaches. These mechanisms of injury have also been reported in African studies. At the authors’ Level 1 Trauma Center in metropolitan Mumbai, 298 railway injuries presented in the year 2011, none of which resulted from a railroad disaster. One hundred thirty-seven patients (46%) were admitted with moderate to severe head injury (Glasgow Coma Scale .9), and 67 (22%) were in hypovolemic shock on arrival. Polytrauma was common. Corresponding to their higher Injury Severity Scores, the in-hospital mortality rate of railway injuries was 42%, in comparison to the 30% seen in road traffic accident admissions. Therefore, primary prevention in Asian and African countries would require strategies and allocation of resources to improve the safety of the interface between people and trains. These measures are likely to save more lives, but also are likely to go unreported and remain invisible, as they would target accidents that are not considered ‘‘disasters’’ by policymakers and the media.

One Hundred Years of Railway Disasters and Recent Trends

Globally, railway transport is increasing steadily. Despite the adoption of diverse safety systems, major railway incidents continue to occur. Higher speeds and increased passenger traffic are factors that influence the risk of mass-casualty incidents and make railway crashes a reality that merits extensive planning and training. Data on railway disasters were obtained from the Centre for Research on the Epidemiology of Disasters (CRED), which maintains the Emergency Events Database (EM-DAT). This descriptive study consists of 529 railway disasters (≥10 killed and/or ≥100 non- fatally injured) from 1910 through 2009. The number of railway disasters, people killed, and non-fatally injured, has increased throughout the last hundred years-particularly during the last four decades (1970-2009), when 88% of all disasters occurred. In the mid-20th century, a shift occurred, resulting in more people being non-fatally injured than fatally injured. During 1970-2009, 74% of all railway disasters occurred in Asia, Africa, and South and Central America, combined. The remaining 26% occurred in Europe, North America, and Oceania, combined. Since 1980, railway disasters have increased, especially in Asia and Africa, while Europe has had a decrease in railway disasters. The number killed per disaster (1970-2009) was highest in Africa (n = 55), followed by South and Central America (n = 47), and Asia (n = 44). The rate was lowest in North America (n = 10) and Europe (n = 29). On average, the number of non-fatal injuries per disaster was two to three times the number of fatalities, however, in the African countries (except South Africa) the relation was closer to 1:1, which correlates to the relation found in more developed countries during the mid-20th century. The total losses (non-fatally and fatally injured) per disaster has shown a slight decreasing trend. Despite extensive crash avoidance and injury reduction safety systems, railway crashes occur on all continents, indicating that this type of incident must be accounted for in disaster planning and training. Better developed safety, crashworthiness, and rescue resources in North America and Europe may be factors explaining why the number of crashes and losses has stabilized and why the average number of people killed per disaster is lowest on these continents.

An epidemiological study of technological disasters in China

Although China has been known for its high frequency and human toll resulting from natural disasters, limited information is available to understand the human impact of its technological disasters (TD). This study provides a time trend analysis of the TD-induced injuries and fatalities since 1979 in mainland China. Through reviewing available academic literature and the examination of two public accessible databases, descriptive analysis of TD epidemiological profile in China was conducted by Emergency Events Database of the Centre for Research on the Epidemiology of Disasters in Brussels and Energy-related Severe Accidents Database of Paul Scherrer Institute in Switzerland which focuses on energy-related severe accidents. Implications on health protection policy and global health were discussed.

When Do Losses Count?

Current global and national databases that monitor losses from natural hazards suffer from a number of limitations, which in turn lead to misinterpretation and fallacies concerning the “truthfulness” of hazard loss data. These biases often go undetected by end users and are generally a product of the type of information stored in loss databases and how they are constructed. This paper highlights some common shortcomings and root causes for data misinterpretation by asking what biases are present in existing databases and how these then manifest themselves in actual loss figures. For illustrative purposes, four widely used, nonproprietary, Web-based hazard databases are examined: the international Emergency Events Database (EM-DAT), the international Natural Hazards Assessment Network (NATHAN), the Spatial Hazard Events and Losses Database for the United States (SHELDUS), and the National Weather Service's Storm Events. We identify six general biases: hazard bias, temporal bias, threshold bias, accounting bias, geographic bias, and systemic bias. To achieve resilient and sustainable communities, we need systematic and comprehensive inventories at the national as well as international level, and data that are temporally and geographically comparable.