Filling the Disaster Data Gap: Lessons from Cataloging Singapore’s Past Disasters

Abstract

International disaster databases and catalogs provide a baseline for researchers, governments, communities, and organizations to understand the risk of a particular place, analyze broader trends in disaster risk, and justify investments in mitigation. Perhaps because Singapore is routinely identified as one of the safest countries in the world, Singapore’s past disasters have not been studied extensively with few events captured in major global databases such as EM-DAT. In this article, we fill the disaster data gap for postwar Singapore (1950–2020) using specified metrics through an archival search, review of literature, and analysis of secondary sources. We present four key lessons from cataloging these events. First, we expand Singapore’s disaster catalog to 39 events in this time period and quantify the extent of this data gap. Second, we identify the mitigating actions that have followed past events that contribute to Singapore’s present-day safety. Third, we discuss how these past events uncover continuities among vulnerability bearers in Singapore. Last, we identify limitations of a disaster catalog when considering future risks. In expanding the disaster catalog, this case study of Singapore supports the need for comprehensive understanding of past disasters in order to examine current and future disaster resilience.

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

“…By examining the global disaster database EM-DAT, this paper highlights shortfalls in the quality and use of disaster data which are rarely considered. Limitations in the quality of disaster databases arising from data collection procedures have been explored in previous literature 3 , 4 , 27 , 28 . In particular, limitations in the availability of data on low-intensity disaster events due to the inclusion criteria specified by CRED are well known.…”

Factors associated with international humanitarian aid appeal for disasters from 1995 to 2015: A retrospective database study

“…Events are included if they meet the following criteria: (1) 10 or more human deaths, (2) 100 or more people affected/injured/homeless, (3) declaration of a state of emergency by the affected country, or (4) international aid appeal by the affected country [ 14 ]. Events dating before 1995 were excluded to minimize bias from the paucity of records before and at the start of the database’s 1988 launch [ 16 , 17 ]. Events dating after 2015 were excluded after correspondence with and at the advice of the database’s authors, due to incomplete data entry pertaining to international aid appeal at the time of writing.…”

EM-DAT: the Emergency Events Database

“…Other limitations are related to data quality issues, which have been regularly overlooked in previous research relying on EM-DAT 37 . Primarily, three types of issues arise: (i) omitted disaster events, as revealed in local case studies 50,51 , (ii) events with missing values, especially in impact variables 36,37 , and (iii) events with inconsistent or inaccurate attributes compared to other sources 31,32 .…”