Kyrgyz Republic

Natural disasters can include extreme events such as heatwaves, floods, landslides, and earthquakes. While many of these phenomena have always occurred, a warming climate is altering their frequency, intensity and geographic reach, turning once-rare events into recurring threats and increasing impact. Rising global temperatures fuel more severe heatwaves and heavier rainfall, which in turn can trigger flash floods and slope failures. Understanding how climate change interacts with these events is essential for building resilient communities and informing global risk monitoring efforts.

The visuals below draw on two related natural disasters datasets. The International Disaster Database (EM‑DAT), maintained by the Centre for Research on the Epidemiology of Disasters (CRED), offers open‑access information on mass disasters worldwide from 1900 through 2024, detailing event occurrences (country self-reported), human impacts, and economic losses. To add spatial precision, we incorporate the Geocoded Disasters (GDIS) dataset, which provides location-specific coordinates for a subset of the EM-DAT disasters between 1960 and 2018. Specifically, we present natural disasters by total number of people affected (injured, displaced, and otherwise impacted), fatalities, and damages (in thousands of USD, adjusted for inflation). 

We only present data from 1980, but users may access older data from the respective sources.

What you can see in this figure
This interactive world map plots every geocoded disaster event recorded in the GDIS dataset between 1980 and 2018. Each marker is color‑coded by disaster type. Users may filter disaster types by selecting/deselecting categories in the legend, to compare regional disaster concentrations and assess where communities have faced the greatest impacts from specific disaster types. 

Understanding the Data: Implications and Utility
This map is useful for visualizing which regions are most susceptible to natural disasters, and identifies what types of events are most prevalent in each location. Notice that not all disasters are of climate nature. 

What are some caveats and potential limitations to consider?
It's important to use this information with caution, as biases in reporting are expected.

Drought: An extended period of unusually low precipitation that produces a shortage of water for people, animals, and plants. Drought develops slowly, sometimes over years, and its onset is difficult to detect. It is not solely a physical phenomenon as its impacts can be exacerbated by human activities and water supply demands.

Earthquake: Sudden movement of a block of the Earth’s crust along a geological fault and associated ground shaking.

Extreme temperature: A general term for temperature variations above (extreme heat) or below (extreme cold) normal conditions.

Flood: 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), in lakes or reservoirs, as well as ponding of water at or near the point where rain fell (flash floods).

Mass movement (dry): Any type of downslope movement of earth materials under hydrological dry conditions.

Mass movement (wet): Types of Earth mass movement that occur when heavy rain or rapid snow/ice melt send large amounts of vegetation, mud, or rock down a slope driven by gravitational forces.

Storm: Any disturbed state of the atmosphere, often marked by significant disruptions such as strong wind, tornadoes, hail, thunder and lightning, heavy precipitation, freezing rain, strong winds, etc.

Volcanic activity: A 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.

The Geocoded Disasters database (GDIS) presents an open source extension to the EM-DAT database that allows researchers to explore and make use of subnational, geocoded data on major disasters triggered by natural hazards since 1960 until 2018. 
Direct Data Access: https://www.earthdata.nasa.gov/data/catalog/esdis-ciesin-sedac-pend-gdis-1.00#overview 

EM-DAT, maintained by the Centre for Research on the Epidemiology of Disasters (CRED) at the Catholic University of Louvain in Belgium, constitutes a comprehensive and widely used multi-disaster catalogue. The EM-DAT database records disaster events by country and “location” (i.e., a string variable providing the names of affected provinces, districts, towns, etc.), but the database contains no geographical information that allows easy integration into a geospatial analysis framework. 

What you can see in this figure
Bar charts are logarithmic and show in each case the total number of disasters (or people affected, etc) per year per disaster. Select or unselect the disaster types for a clearer view. 

Understanding the Data: Implications and Utility
This visualization is useful for understanding the interannual variability in natural disaster impacts for a specific country, and the relative significance of different disaster types. 

The International Disaster Database (EM-DAT, https://www.emdat.be/) is a global database that systematically records information on natural and technological disasters from 1900 to the present day. Managed by the Centre for Research on the Epidemiology of Disasters (CRED) at the Université catholique de Louvain in Belgium, it provides essential data on disaster occurrence, human impacts (e.g., deaths, affected people), and economic damages. This data supports humanitarian action, disaster preparedness, risk reduction strategies, and vulnerability assessments worldwide. Here, we only show data from 1980, which has been reported to have fewer biases.

What you can see in this figure
The pie chart illustrates the relative share of cumulative people affected, fatalities, and inflation-adjusted damages across various disaster categories from 1980 through 2024. 

Understanding the Data: Implications and Utility
This chart is useful for quickly understanding the dominant types of disasters and their primary impacts within a given region. It helps to ascertain if most disasters are water-related (e.g., storms, floods) and whether they are primarily climate-induced or of other origins (e.g., earthquakes).

The International Disaster Database (EM-DAT, https://www.emdat.be/) is a global database that systematically records information on natural and technological disasters from 1900 to the present day. Managed by the Centre for Research on the Epidemiology of Disasters (CRED) at the Université catholique de Louvain in Belgium, it provides essential data on disaster occurrence, human impacts (e.g., deaths, affected people), and economic damages. This data supports humanitarian action, disaster preparedness, risk reduction strategies, and vulnerability assessments worldwide. Here, we only show data from 1980, which has been reported to have fewer biases.