Earth and Mineral Sciences Library
105 Deike Building
University Park, PA
814-865-9517
Purpose: Guide to statistical and factual information about disasters.
Insurance Information Institute. This site provides information on the worst disasters for the U.S. and world in terms of deaths and losses caused by earthquakes, hurricanes, tornadoes, floods and fires. Also provided is a "ten worst monetary losses in the U.S." list under each category.
ReliefWeb. ReliefWeb is a project of the United Nations Department of Humanitarian Affairs. It provides information about on-going emergencies and crises worldwide; some information about past crises is also available. Information includes situation reports detailing the date, type and extent of the disaster, maps, damage estimates, requests for assistance and donations, numbers of people affected and more.
International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies. This site features reports of activities, situation reports and appeals for assistance worldwide. It also includes the annual publication World Disasters Report (copies of this report are available in the library), which analyzes humanitarian crises of the past, present and future in tables, text and figures. Data include annual and historic disasters by date and country, number of victims by country and more.
Center for International Disaster Information. This site provides links to situation reports of natural and man-made disasters.
EM-DAT : the International Disaster Database This site, maintained by the United Nations Centre for Research on the Epidemiology of Disasters, provides country profiles and allows searching by region, country, time period, and disaster type.
Federal Emergency Management Agency. This site focuses on U.S. disasters. It provides extensive information about historic and current disaster situations, federally-declared disasters, news releases, fact sheets, and a searchable photo archive.
Natural Hazards Center. This is the best site for comprehensive information relating to natural disasters. Included are extensive quick response reports of both natural and man-made disasters, the full text of many of the Center's publications, lists of organizations, and extensive links to other Internet sites.
Yahoo - Disasters page. Yahoo's index to disaster links on the Web is a useful compilation of miscellaneous sources for disaster events.
Information Please - World Disasters. This site lists events by type (epidemics, floods, fires, shipwrecks, spills, etc.) then by date, going back centuries in some cases.
Disaster Time Line. This chart shows major disaster events and U.S. responses from 1969-2004.
General Resources
National Storm Prediction Center. This site provides statistics on tornadoes and other severe storms including, monthly totals and averages, and killer tornado statistics for the US Its historical online archive contains data on tornadoes, hail and convective winds. Statistics are given by state from the 1940's to 1995 for injuries, fatalities and costs, overall rankings and more. Most files in the archive must be downloaded and unzipped. (For data after 1995 see the NCDC Web site, described later.)
Tornado and Storm Research Organisation. TORRO, a private British research organization, has compiled lists of all-time weather extremes for Britain for smog, precipitation, wind, floods and more as well as annual synopses of severe weather events in Europe and the UK.
USA Today Weather Page. This site features means, extremes, weather records, and recent weather highlights for locations around the world. It includes information and statistics on weather events such as hurricanes, tornadoes, water spouts, and severe storms. Excellent explanations of weather phenomena are also provided.
National Climatic Data Center for detailed reports of extreme US weather events.
Societal Aspects of Weather site which contains economic and casualty data for various weather phenomena. Also at this site is the Extreme Weather Sourcebook which documents the economic cost of extreme weather events.
Hurricanes and Tropical Storms
Hurricane/Tropical Data. The Unisys Weather Processor provides storm track charts and text-based tables (including position in latitude and longitude, maximum sustained winds in knots, and central pressure in millibars) for storms in the Atlantic (from 1851), the Eastern (from 1949), Western (from 1945) and South (from 2000) Pacific, and the North (from 1945) and South (from 1949) Indian. There is a composite chart for each season as well as for each individual storm. The site also provides extensive links to satellite and radar imagery.
National Hurricane Center. This site provides current and historic tropical cyclone, hurricane, and high seas data along with high wind/wave alerts and ocean weather for mariners and aviators.
Hurricanes, Typhoons and Tropical Cyclones FAQ. This site provides lists of the costliest, deadliest, longest and the most intense events as well as other records and data about tropical storms.
Droughts and Floods
National Drought Mitigation Center. This site contains links to current US drought forecasts and advisories. Other data includes moisture and vegetation indices, water supply conditions and global drought headlines. The "Drought Climatology" section has over 100 years of US drought data mapped and graphed.
Dartmouth Flood Observatory. The "Flood Archive" has a worldwide index map, report summaries and a table that displays the start and end date, number of deaths, damage estimates and amount of land impacted for flood events from 1994 to present. The site also provides numerous satellite images of flood events.
Drought Portal. This site features maps and data covering U.S. and North American drought information.
USGS Waterwatch. This U.S. site features maps and tables of current and historic (~ 2004+) flood and drought conditions, nationally and at the state level.
Tornadoes and Severe Storms
The Tornado Project Online. This commercial site links to descriptions of current (and some historic) tornado events in the US 'Top ten' lists of tornadoes by number of deaths, size, etc. are provided. It also contains an explanation of the Fujita tornado intensity scale. Tornadoes. This NOAA web site describes historic tornado occurrences in the US.
Stormtrack. This site is usually one of the first to post eyewitness accounts of severe weather events occurring in the US It is also a good source for images of tornadoes and severe storms.
Lightning and Wildfires
National Lightning Safety Institute. NLSI is a nonprofit research organization whose site contains lightning safety information, statistics on losses and damage caused by lightning, and quick lightning facts.
Human Voltage - What happens when people and lightning converge. This NASA-sponsored page contains statistics on incidents of people being struck by lightning. It also describes typical injuries caused by lightning plus links to many other lightning incident stories.
Historically Significant Wildland Fires. The National Interagency Fire Center provides this listing of significant U.S. fire events, organized by date, location, and damage.
GEOMAC. Geospatial Multi-Agency Coordination Group provides current wildland fire maps and information about ongoing wildfires.
Incident Information System. This site provides current information on U.S. wildfires including cause, location, and acres affected. Data on this site can be searched up to a year post-incident.
Heat Waves and Cold Waves
Temperature Extremes. This page at the National Climatic Data Center provides information on some historic climate extremes for the U.S. State-level extremes of precipitation and temperature are also available.
NOAA Extreme Heat Page. This site describes heat indexes and provides statistics on past and current heat emergencies.
Extreme Heat Data. From the Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Reports of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention which contain data on heat related deaths.
Earthquakes, Tsunamis and Asteroid Impacts
National Earthquake Information Center. This is the site for information and maps on the latest earthquakes to occur on the globe. It features lists of the largest, deadliest, and costliest earthquakes, an interactive database that produces customized reports and much more.
The IRIS Consortium. IRIS is a university research consortium that collects and distributes seismic data. A clickable epicenter map supplies information on events that have occurred in the last 30 days. Detailed event specific data files and maps are available via the IRIS SPYDER database for events since October 1996.
Tsunami. This site provides access to information on -tsunami events as well as access to near-real time events via a link to the West Coast/Alaska Tsunami Warning Center.
Asteroid and Comet Impact Hazards. This site contains a list of upcoming close encounters with asteroids. It also has an image gallery of impact craters and other information relating to cometary and asteroid impacts.
Volcanoes
Michigan Technological University Volcanoes Homepage. This site offers exceptional information on current volcanic activity, remote sensing images of volcanoes and links to other volcano related Web sites. The MTU coverage includes location/geological setting, topographic maps and air photos, meteorology, type of edifice, petrology, eruption history, bibliography and images for indexed volcanoes.
The Electronic Volcano. Hosted by Dartmouth College, this site maintains an excellent bibliography of volcanological literature.An index provides links to information by volcano name or by country.
USGS Volcano Learning Web.
The U.S. Geological Survey has a series of regional volcano observatories in the Pacific Rim which are excellent for locating regional volcanic information.
Cascades Volcano Observatory for volcanoes in the Cascade Range including extensive information on Mt. St. Helen's.
Alaska Volcano Observatory for volcanoes along the Aleutian arc.
Hawaiian Volcano Observatory for Hawaiian arc volcanoes.
There are numerous sites about volcanoes on the Web. A few others of note include: Smithsonian's Global Volcanism Program, Italy's Volcanoes, and the Volcanic Homepage.
Mass Movements
Cyberspace Snow and Avalanche Center. This site provides current conditions and avalanche bulletins for mountainous regions all over the world as well as an incident report table for the current season that includes location, fatalities, activity that sparked the event, and more. There are also numerous statistics and an archive of eye-witness accounts and reports.
Westwide Avalanche Network. Maintained by the American Association of Avalanche Professionals, this site contains extensive information on current and past avalanche seasons, detailed accident reports and a photo library of avalanche events.
National Landslide Information Center. This site provides access to fact sheets, reports and images of specific U.S. landslide events.
Diseases
National Center for Infectious Diseases. Maintained by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control, this site provides information about existing and new or emerging infectious diseases. Lists of diseases and information about them are provided. Most useful is the section called "Traveler's Health," which contains information about disease outbreaks by occurrence and by geographic region.
Outbreaks. Provided by the World Health Organization, this site summarizes outbreaks of diseases around the world. It also includes disease fact sheets and health information for travelers.
Famine
Global Information and Early Warning System on Food and Agriculture. Maintained by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, this site provides information on world food supplies, prices, locations experiencing food shortages and crop damages, both currently and in the recent past.
World Food Programme. The WFP Emergency Reports provides weekly updates on WFP emergency operations. The site also includes historic food aid statistics, transportation and logistics statistics, and vulnerability assessment maps for crisis areas.
Migratory Pests. This site tracks information about migratory pests such as the desert locust. It maintains situation reports and maps of infestations.
Accidents
Examples of Engineering Failures. This site, hosted by the University of British Columbia, is a bibliography of resources related to selected technological disasters. Categories include aircraft, bridges, buildings, dams, and other resources.
National Transportation Safety Board . This site offers statistics and data on accidents in the U.S., current and historic, by transportation mode--aviation, highway, marine, rail, pipeline and hazardous materials.
Other sites of note related to transportation disasters include Major Airline Disasters for information on world-wide events, and The Aviation Accident Site which contains radar images and cockpit voice recordings.
National Response Center. This site features a database of all oil, chemical, radiological, biological, and etiological hazardous substance discharges into the environment anywhere in the United States. It contains facts on types of spills, where spills occurred, the "top ten" spills, numbers of spills by location and so on.
National Fire Data Center. This site maintains detailed statistics on urban fires in the U.S. from 1985 to date.
Failure Watch. This site provides brief descriptions of incidents involving civil engineering failures.
Civil and Environmental Engineering Exhibits. This site, hosted by Carleton University, features notable civil engineering works, including disastrous ones such as bridge collapses.
Mining Disasters. This site features a list of mine accidents, by decade, in which there were five or more fatalities.
Major Oil Spills. The International Tanker Owners Pollution Federation maintains a database of accidental oil spills from tankers, combined carriers and barges since 1970, except those resulting from acts of war. The data includes the type of oil spilt, the spill amount, the cause and location of the incident and the vessel involved. The site also includes summaries of major oil spill events, such as the Exxon Valdez, from 1967 to date.
List of catastrophic collapses of radio masts and towers. This list, hosted by Wikipedia, provides information by date, location, height, structural type, and reason for the collapse.
Terrorism and War
The Terrorism Research Center. The site contains terrorist profiles, a calendar of significant dates for terrorist activities, and links to sites containing descriptions of terrorist incidents and travel advisories.
United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees. This site offers various data on refugee populations from 1985 onward.
Terrorism Time Line. This chart shows a timeline of major terrorist activities affecting the U.S. from 1993 to date.
