Human and economic impacts of disasters: can we trust the global data?

This article conducts a missing data diagnosis of the widely-cited, global disaster database, the Emergency Events Database (EM-DAT) to identify the extent and potential determinants of missing data within EM-DAT. Through a review of prominent empirical literature, the article contextualises how missing data within EM-DAT has been handled previously. Reliable and complete data held in disaster databases are imperative to inform effective disaster preparedness and mitigation policies.

This article identified that a large proportion of missing data was identified for disasters attributed to natural hazards occurring between 1990 and 2020, particularly on the economic losses. The year the disaster occurred, income-classification of the affected country and disaster type were all significant predictors of missingness for key human and economic loss variables. Accordingly, data are unlikely to be missing completely at random. Advanced statistical methods to handle missing data are thus warranted when analysing disaster data to minimise the risk of biasing statistical inferences and to ensure global disaster data can be trusted.