Font size:
Print
Disaster Databases Limitation
Context:
Disaster databases have several limitations, including risk, time, accounting, and geographical biases, which raise questions about the accuracy of data and whether natural disasters are truly increasing.
More on News:
- Food and Agriculture Organisation(FAO) noted that disaster events worldwide have increased from 100 events per year in the 1970s to around 400 per year in 2023.
- UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC): “The number of disasters has increased by a factor of five over the 50 years, driven by climate change, more extreme weather, and improved reporting.
- As per the International Disaster Database (EM-DAT) of the Centre for Research on the Epidemiology of Disasters (CRED):
- Reporting quality and coverage over time can be a factor.
- Technologies and initiatives can be considered responsible for the dominant trend observed presently.
- Therefore, it is challenging to infer insight into the actual drivers of disasters such as climate change, population growth, or disaster risk management.”
As per EM-DAT reason for such an Increase in number:
- Presently, the Reporting and Communication of small events have improved due to which the number of smaller events is increasing too.
- In and around 1900, mainly large events were observed not small ones because:
- Neither humanitarian aid nor telecommunications were particularly developed.
- Few organisations were interested in compiling data on all disasters.
- Earlier, Poorer Data-coverage in low-income countries.
- For instance, from 2000 to 2019, only 13% of disasters in Africa and 23% in South Asia reported any economic losses.
- Disaster statistics have inconsistencies for different types of disasters:
- Many regions like Sub-Saharan Africa have poor data coverage and are completely overlooked.
- Over half of the heat events were reported from only Japan, India, Pakistan, the U.S., France and Germany and it is unlikely these are the only countries experiencing extreme heat events.
- This reflects that such events are just not being recorded or estimated in other regions.
- Proper quantification of the health effects of extreme temperatures is difficult.
- Some disasters have immediate, acute effects on mortality, health, and infrastructure, while others like droughts have medium-to-long-term impacts like malnutrition and food insecurity.