On 24 October 2023, the UP RI Nationwide Operational Assessment of Hazards (NOAH) Center attended a training session on the Emergency Events Database (EM-DAT) spearheaded by the Center for Research on Epidemiology of Disasters (CRED) of the University of Louvain (UCLouvain) and in partnership with the UP Institute of Civil Engineering (UP ICE). The training took place at The Hub of the UP National Engineering Center, University of the Philippines Diliman.
The EM-DAT is an independent, open-source global database that monitors the occurrence of natural and technological disasters and quantifies their human and economic impacts. It contains data on the occurrence and impacts of over 26,000 mass disasters worldwide from 1900 to present. The database is compiled from various sources, including UN agencies, non-governmental organizations, reinsurance companies, research institutes, and press agencies. The database and projects of EM-DAT are primarily sponsored by the United States Agency for International Development (USAID). The EM-DAT training is part of a project that CRED is launching to create and strengthen the retrospective local disaster loss database in a number of selected countries including the Philippines. This training aims to provide a systematic procedure for recording of natural and technological disasters, including disaster loss data methodology and digitization procedures.
The training session was led by Ms. Regina Below and Dr. Cinzia Lanfredi Sofia from CRED, with the assistance of Asst. Prof. Joshua Agar from UP ICE. The workshop focused on the data model structure, content, and hands-on exercise. The database’s objective is to support humanitarian action at the national and international levels in decision making for disaster risk and reduction management strategies.
In the second half of the workshop, NOAH and ICE researchers encoded a NDRRMC situation report to the database. The output of this workshop provides information on a disaster that happened, specifically the impact on people, infrastructure, and economy. The generated profile and summary tables are directly downloadable. The end goal of the workshop is to strengthen the methodology of building a comprehensive, up-to-date, and accurate disaster database in the Philippines.