Ratio of total damages of all disasters to GDP

Definition

Total estimated damages (nominal 000’USD, meaning unadjusted for inflation) divided by GDP (nominal 000’USD) and multiplied by 100 for readability. A disaster is only capture in the database if it meets at least one of the following criteria: 10 or more dead, 100 or more affected/injured, call for external assistance, or declaration of emergency. Therefore the events captured are significant, and can be characterized as medium or extreme events.

Relevance

An essential element of any resilience analysis is to assess and, if possible, document the intensity, nature, and frequency of the shock and stressors that a particular system is exposed to. The EMDAT database has superior country and year coverage to other available options such as the SDG indicators related to economic losses due to disasters.