Data
Economic damages from natural disasters
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What you should know about this indicator
- The total damage is defined as the value of all economic losses directly or indirectly due to the disaster, unadjusted for inflation.
- EM-DAT defines a disaster as a situation or event which overwhelms local capacity, necessitating a request to the national or international level for external assistance; an unforeseen and often sudden event that causes great damage, destruction, and human suffering.
- Drought is defined as an extended period of unusually low precipitation that produces a shortage of water for people, animals, and plants. Drought is different from most other hazards in that it develops slowly, sometimes even over the years, and its onset is generally difficult to detect.
- An earthquake is defined as a sudden movement of a block of the Earth's crust along a geological fault and associated ground shaking. The data includes the impacts of earthquake events, aftershocks and tsunamis.
- Extreme temperature is used as a general term for temperature variations above (extreme heat) or below (extreme cold) normal conditions. Deaths from extreme temperatures are often indirect, meaning they are not reported or quantified without additional analysis and modelling. Some countries or regions increasingly do this work, but records are very geographically and temporally incomplete. This makes it hard to discern trends over time, or differences between countries.
- Storms include tornadoes, hailstorms, thunderstorms, sandstorms, blizzards, and extreme wind events.
- Flood is used as a general term for the overflow of water from a stream channel onto normally dry land in the floodplain (riverine flooding), higher-than-normal levels along the coast (coastal flooding) and in lakes or reservoirs as well as ponding of water at or near the point where the rain fell (flash floods). We also include glacial lake outburst floods in this category.
- Volcanic activity is defined as any type of volcanic event near an opening/vent in the Earth's surface including volcanic eruptions of lava, ash, hot vapor, gas, and pyroclastic material.
- A wildfire is defined as any uncontrolled and non-prescribed combustion or burning of plants in a natural setting such as a forest, grassland, brush land or tundra, which consumes natural fuels and spreads based on environmental conditions (e.g., wind, or topography). Wildfires can be triggered by lightning or human actions.
- A landslide is the downslope movement of rock, soil, or debris under gravity. This includes both wet mass movements (such as mudflows triggered by heavy rain or snowmelt) and dry mass movements (such as rockfalls).
Annual economic damages from all natural disasters as a share of GDP
EM-DAT
Damages are expressed as a share of gross domestic product (GDP). Disasters include events such as earthquakes, volcanoes, drought, wildfires, storms, and flooding.
Source
EM-DAT, CRED / UCLouvain (2026); National statistical organizations and central banks, OECD national accounts, and World Bank staff estimates (2026) – with major processing by Our World in Data
Last updated
April 30, 2026
Next expected update
April 2027
Date range
1960–2024
Unit
%
Sources and processing
This data is based on the following sources
How we process data at Our World in Data
All data and visualizations on Our World in Data rely on data sourced from one or several original data providers. Preparing this original data involves several processing steps. Depending on the data, this can include standardizing country names and world region definitions, converting units, calculating derived indicators such as per capita measures, as well as adding or adapting metadata such as the name or the description given to an indicator.
At the link below you can find a detailed description of the structure of our data pipeline, including links to all the code used to prepare data across Our World in Data.
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To cite this page overall, including any descriptions, FAQs or explanations of the data authored by Our World in Data, please use the following citation:
“Data Page: Annual economic damages from all natural disasters as a share of GDP”, part of the following publication: Hannah Ritchie, Pablo Rosado, and Max Roser (2022) - “Natural Disasters”. Data adapted from EM-DAT, National statistical organizations and central banks, OECD national accounts, and World Bank staff estimates. Retrieved from https://archive.ourworldindata.org/20260506-130421/grapher/natural-disasters-economic-damages.html [online resource] (archived on May 6, 2026).How to cite this data
In-line citationIf you have limited space (e.g. in data visualizations), you can use this abbreviated in-line citation:
EM-DAT, CRED / UCLouvain (2026); National statistical organizations and central banks, OECD national accounts, and World Bank staff estimates (2026) – with major processing by Our World in DataFull citation
EM-DAT, CRED / UCLouvain (2026); National statistical organizations and central banks, OECD national accounts, and World Bank staff estimates (2026) – with major processing by Our World in Data. “Annual economic damages from all natural disasters as a share of GDP – EM-DAT” [dataset]. EM-DAT, “The International Disasters Database”; National statistical organizations and central banks, OECD national accounts, and World Bank staff estimates, “World Development Indicators 125” [original data]. Retrieved May 6, 2026 from https://archive.ourworldindata.org/20260506-130421/grapher/natural-disasters-economic-damages.html (archived on May 6, 2026).Download
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