ReliefWeb Disasters List: Global Humanitarian Events from 1981 to Present

ReliefWeb, a service of the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), maintains this dataset of natural disasters with humanitarian impact from 1981 to the present. The data aggregates information from over 4,000 sources, including international agencies, governments, and research institutions.

Use Cases

• Trend analysis of 'flooding' and 'drought' events over a 40-year period
• Identifying geographic clusters of 'earthquake-tsunami' hazards
• Linking historical disaster events to UN OCHA situation reports and assessments

Strengths

• 40-year temporal coverage starting from 1981
• Aggregates data from 4,000+ verified humanitarian and government sources
• Maintained by the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA)

Limitations

• Specific column schema and field definitions are not provided in the metadata
• Potential bias toward events with significant humanitarian impact rather than all geophysical occurrences

Provenance

Source

ReliefWeb (UN OCHA)

Collection Method

Editorial monitoring and collection from 4,000+ sources

Time Range

1981 - 2026

Freshness

Updated through March 2026 according to source metadata.

Geography

Global