Guidelines on measuring losses from disasters: human and economic impact indicators

Climate change is directly linked with the increase in frequency and magnitude of natural disasters. In the past few years the debate in the Disaster Risk Reduction community focused on the issue of natural hazards' impacts assessment. The aim of this document is to provide guidance to disaster loss data compilation initiatives on how to register human and economic impacts in a disaster loss database. This guidance is not an assessment of existing loss methodologies and approaches, but instead it represents definitional guidance that can be widely applied in existing disaster loss databases. This document is a further step towards strengthening the systematic and standardized collection of information and data on the occurrence and human impacts of disasters.

The document can be used to inform governments and institutions responsible for disaster risk reduction and management. The document offers harmonized definitions of human and economic impact indicators and recommendations, which can be used to provide guidance for the future development of national and sub-national databases.