EM-DAT

EM-DAT catalogs epidemiological records of disasters to enable analysis of extreme temperature events and their public health impacts across Europe.

Key Features:

• Disaster Classification: Categorizes events into natural disasters, technological disasters, and "Complex disasters" that include major famines where drought is not the primary cause.
• Data Scope: Records extreme temperature-related events such as heat waves, droughts, forest or land fires, and cold waves with severe winter conditions.
• Pediatric Focus: Enables assessment of impacts on vulnerable populations, including analyses specific to children in public health studies.

Scientific Applications:

• Public Health Research: Supports studies correlating rising average surface temperatures with the frequency and distribution of extreme temperature-related events in Europe.
• Casualty Analysis: Provides detailed casualty records by event type, including findings that heat waves, while less frequently recorded than cold waves, accounted for 95.1% of reported casualties in the cited analyses.
• Climate Change Impact Assessment: Facilitates analysis of trends in temperature data to project future public health challenges from increasing frequency and intensity of heat waves.

Methodology:

Compiles data from various sources including average surface temperature records from the World Bank’s Climate Change Knowledge Portal; employs comparative and descriptive statistical methods to analyze recorded events and adheres to STROBE reporting criteria.