Collecting disaster loss data
Introduction
Traditionally, the recording of disaster losses and damages starts at the impact level by the national disaster risk management offices. There are critical challenges in this process, including a lack of or limitations in globally accepted methodology and limited data standards.
Recent progress in strengthening the data ecosystem for tracking hazardous events and disaster losses and damages points to the need to harness the comparative advantage of organisations to inform a range of services. These include generating impact-based early warning to enable early action, tracking disaster impacts and how they affect disproportionately some vulnerable, excluded and marginalized groups, and informing risk-based approaches and planning.
We cannot reduce risk effectively if we cannot measure disaster losses. Have a look at stocktaking, challenges and best practices in this page on collecting disaster loss data.