This article presents a new open source extension to the Emergency Events Database (EM-DAT) that allows researchers, for the first time, to explore and make use of subnational, geocoded data on major disasters triggered by natural hazards. The Geocoded Disasters (GDIS) dataset provides spatial geometry in the form of GIS polygons and centroid latitude and longitude coordinates for each administrative entity listed as a disaster location in the EM-DAT database. In total, GDIS contains spatial information on 39,953 locations for 9,924 unique disasters occurring worldwide between 1960 and 2018. The dataset facilitates connecting the EM-DAT database to other geographic data sources on the subnational level to enable rigorous empirical analyses of disaster determinants and impacts.

Climate change is a major threat to sustained economic growth and wellbeing in the Global South. To what extent does official development assistance (ODA) strengthen recipient communities' capacity to cope with climatic extremes? Here, we investigate whether inflow of development aid mitigates adverse health impacts of subsequent drought among children under 5 years of age, drawing on survey data of nearly 140,000 respondents across 16 countries in Sub-Saharan Africa in combination with georeferenced data on World Banksponsored ODA projects and historical weather statistics. A coarsened exact matching analysis reveals little benefit of development aid on child nutritional status under normal meteorological conditions. However, among children exposed to drought, prior aid allocation is associated with significantly reduced weight loss. While the merit of ODA in facilitating long-term growth remains debated, this study finds consistent indication that multilateral development aid improves recipient communities' capacity to cope with future drought.

As the climate changes, human livelihoods will increasingly be threatened by extreme weather events. To provide adequate disaster relief, states extensively rely on multilateral institutions, in particular the United Nations (UN). However, the determinants of this multilateral disaster aid channeled through the UN are poorly understood. To fill this gap, we examine the determinants of UN disaster aid using a dataset on UN aid covering almost 2,000 climate-related disasters occurring between 2006 and 2017. We make two principal contributions. First, we add to research on disaster impacts by linking existing disaster data from the Emergency Events Database (EM-DAT) to a meteorological reanalysis. We generate a uniquely global hazard severity measure that is comparable across different climate-related disaster types, and assess and bolster measurement validity of EM-DAT climate-related disasters. Second, by combining these data with social data on aid and its correlates, we contribute to the literature on aid disbursements. We show that UN disaster aid is primarily shaped by humanitarian considerations, rather than by strategic donor interests. These results are supported by a series of regression and out-of-sample prediction analyses and appear consistent with the view that multilateral institutions are able to shield aid allocation decisions from particular state interests to ensure that aid is motivated by need.