Centre for Research on the Epidemiology of Disasters

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The Centre for Research on the Epidemiology of Disasters (CRED) is a research unit of the University of Louvain (UCLouvain). It is part of the School of Public Health located on the UCLouvain Brussels Woluwe campus, in Brussels, Belgium. [1]

Contents

CRED has been active for over thirty years in the fields of international disaster and conflict health studies, with research and training activities linking relief, rehabilitation and development. It promotes research, training and technical expertise on humanitarian emergencies, with a special focus on public health and epidemiology.

History

In 1971, Professor Michel F. Lechat  [ Wikidata ], an epidemiologist at UCLouvain, initiated a research programme to study health issues in disaster situations. Two years later he established CRED as a non-profit institution with international status. Since 1980, CRED has been a World Health Organization (WHO) Collaborating Centre.

Following the retirement of Professor Lechat in 1992, Professor Debarati Guha-Sapir—a researcher in the programme since 1984—became CRED's director.

Goals

CRED promotes research and provides an evidence base to the international community on the burden of disease and related health issues arising from disasters and conflicts to improve preparedness and responses to humanitarian emergencies.[ citation needed ]

CRED trains field managers, students, relief personnel and health professionals in the management of short- and long-term humanitarian emergencies. [2]

Focus

CRED's research focuses on humanitarian and emergency situations with major impacts on human health. These include all types of natural disasters such as earthquakes, floods, windstorms, famines and droughts; and human induced disasters creating mass displacement of people from civil strife and conflicts.

CRED focuses on health aspects and the burden of disease arising from disasters and complex emergencies. CRED also promotes research on the broader aspects of humanitarian crises, such as human rights and humanitarian law, socio-economic and environmental issues, early warning systems, mental health care, and the special needs of women and children.

CRED is actively involved in stimulating debates on the effectiveness of various humanitarian interventions. It encourages scientific and policy discussions on existing and potential interventions and their impacts on acute and chronic malnutrition, human survival, morbidity, infectious diseases, and mental health.

The CRED team works in four main areas:

EM-DAT

The centre maintains the Emergency Disaster Database (EM-DAT), a repository of information on mass disasters that happened since 1900. As of 2024 it contained records on 26,000 disasters. About 2/3 of the disasters are classified as natural, e.g. storms or earthquakes, while the rest are technological, e.g. industrial disasters. The database was founded in 1988 as a joint project between CRED and the World Health Organization. [3] Data is sourced from UN agencies, non-governmental organizations, insurance companies, academic sources, and press agencies. [4] As of 2024 it receives primary funding from the US Agency for International Development. [3]

EM-DAT is freely available, searchable by disaster type, country of origin, and source of information. [5]

The NASA GDIS Global dataset of geocoded disaster locations relies on EM-DAT data. [6] [7]

The team

CRED's multinational and multidisciplinary team includes experts in medicine and public health, informatics and database management, psychology, nutritional sciences, sociology, economics and geography. The working languages are English and French.

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Disaster</span> Event resulting in major damage, destruction or death

A disaster is an event that causes serious harm to people, buildings, economies, or the environment, and the affected community cannot handle it alone. Natural disasters like avalanches, floods, earthquakes, and wildfires are caused by natural hazards. Human-made disasters like oil spills, terrorist attacks and power outages are caused by people. Nowadays, it is hard to separate natural and human-made disasters because human actions can make natural disasters worse. Climate change also affects how often disasters due to extreme weather hazards happen.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Epidemiology</span> Study of health and disease within a population

Epidemiology is the study and analysis of the distribution, patterns and determinants of health and disease conditions in a defined population.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Humanitarian aid</span> Material or logistical assistance for people in need

Humanitarian aid is material and logistic assistance, usually in the short-term, to people in need. Among the people in need are the homeless, refugees, and victims of natural disasters, wars, and famines. The primary objective of humanitarian aid is to save lives, alleviate suffering, and maintain human dignity.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Humanitarian crisis</span> Large threat to the health and safety of many people

A humanitarian crisis is defined as a singular event or a series of events that are threatening in terms of health, safety or well-being of a community or large group of people. It may be an internal or external conflict and usually occurs throughout a large land area. Local, national and international responses are necessary in such events.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs</span> United Nations body managing response to complex emergencies

The United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) is a United Nations (UN) body established in December 1991 by the General Assembly to strengthen the international response to complex emergencies and natural disasters. It is the successor to the Office of the United Nations Disaster Relief Coordinator (UNDRO).

An environmental emergency is defined as a "sudden-onset disaster or accident resulting from natural, technological or human-induced factors, or a combination of these, that causes or threatens to cause severe environmental damage as well as loss of human lives and property."

The Sudanese Red Crescent (SRC) is the biggest and most decentralized and widespread humanitarian organization operating in Sudan. The society developed out of the Sudan branch of the British Red Cross Society and was established in 1956. Upon Sudan's independence in March 1956 received official recognition as an independent National Society following the Sudanese Council of Ministers decree No. 869. The National Society covers nearly the entire country with 15 State branches and several sub-branches/units in the provinces/localities and administrative units, with a nationwide community-based network of 35,000 active volunteers and another 300,000 who can be deployed as need arises. It has well-established working relations with public authorities at federal, state and local levels, and good partnership and collaboration with Movement partners and UN specialized agencies and national and international NGOs working in Sudan.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Télécoms Sans Frontières</span>

Télécoms Sans Frontières (TSF) is an emergency technology non-governmental organization, which intervenes in the context of humanitarian crises, conflict zones and areas hit by natural disasters to set up satellite communication for the affected populations and humanitarian organisations.

The Office of U.S. Foreign Disaster Assistance (OFDA) was an organizational unit within the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) charged by the President of the United States with directing and coordinating international United States government disaster assistance. USAID merged the former offices of OFDA and Food for Peace (FFP) in 2020 to form the Bureau for Humanitarian Assistance (BHA).

Rare or extreme events are events that occur with low frequency, and often refers to infrequent events that have a widespread effect and which might destabilize systems. Rare events encompass natural phenomena, anthropogenic hazards, as well as phenomena for which natural and anthropogenic factors interact in complex ways.

Evidence Aid is an international platform that was formed out of the need to deliver time sensitive access to systematic reviews for use in the event of disasters and other humanitarian emergencies. The method of using systematic reviews is to provide evidence for use by policy makers, clinicians, regulators, and even the general public who benefit when these materials are easy to understand and are accessible. The vision of Evidence Aid is to create and satisfy an increasing demand for evidence to improve the impact of humanitarian aid by stimulating the use of an evidence-based approach. Evidence Aid was founded in 2004. It is currently a project that is housed by the Cochrane Collaboration and Queen's University Belfast. Evidence Aid was established by several members of the international Cochrane Collaboration following the 2004 Indian Ocean earthquake and tsunami. Evidence Aid was formed to provide systematic reviews on the effects of interventions and actions of relevance prior to, in the course of and during the aftermath of disasters or other humanitarian emergencies, in order to improve health-related outcomes; their aim is to work with those who need and use this evidence, as well as working with researchers and publishers to facilitate freely accessible materials to meet the information needs for those facing humanitarian emergencies and disasters. Evidence Aid works in collaboration with other organizations including Public Health England; Red Cross Flanders, International Rescue Committee; Centers for Disease Control; Centre for Evidence-Based Medicine; and the University of Oxford.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Emily Ying Yang Chan</span> Public health academic in Hong Kong

Emily Ying Yang Chan, MH, is a clinical humanitarian doctor and global academic expert in public health and humanitarian medicine based in Hong Kong. She was appointed CEO of the GX Foundation in 2019. She is concurrently Assistant Dean and Professor of the Chinese University of Hong Kong Faculty of Medicine, Professor at the Jockey Club School of Public Health and Primary Care, Director at the Centre for Global Health (CGH), Director of the Collaborating Centre for Oxford University and CUHK for Disaster and Medical Humanitarian Response (CCOUC), Director of the Centre of Excellence (ICoE-CCOUC) of Integrated Research on Disaster Risk (IRDR), Visiting Professor of Public Health Medicine at the Oxford University Nuffield Department of Medicine, Fellow at Harvard University FXB Center for Health and Human Rights, Honorary Professor at University of Hong Kong Li Ka Shing Faculty of Medicine, and Fellow at Hong Kong Academy of Medicine.

Collaborating Centre for Oxford University and CUHK for Disaster and Medical Humanitarian Response was established jointly by the University of Oxford and The Chinese University of Hong Kong (CUHK) as a non-profit research centre to carry out research, training and community knowledge transfer in the area of disaster and medical humanitarian response in Greater China and the Asia–Pacific region. It is housed in the CUHK Faculty of Medicine and its director is Emily Ying Yang Chan as of 2016.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Emergency sanitation</span> Management and technical processes required to provide sanitation in emergency situations

Emergency sanitation is the management and technical processes required to provide sanitation in emergency situations. Emergency sanitation is required during humanitarian relief operations for refugees, people affected by natural disasters and internally displaced persons. There are three phases of emergency response: Immediate, short term and long term. In the immediate phase, the focus is on managing open defecation, and toilet technologies might include very basic latrines, pit latrines, bucket toilets, container-based toilets, chemical toilets. The short term phase might also involve technologies such as urine-diverting dry toilets, septic tanks, decentralized wastewater systems. Providing handwashing facilities and management of fecal sludge are also part of emergency sanitation.

Common Operational Datasets or CODs, are authoritative reference datasets needed to support operations and decision-making for all actors in a humanitarian response. CODs are 'best available' datasets that ensure consistency and simplify the discovery and exchange of key data. The data is typically geo-spatially linked using a coordinate system and has unique geographic identification codes (P-codes).

Debarati Guha-Sapir is an Indian epidemiologist and public health researcher based in Belgium. She is the director of the Université catholique de Louvain Centre for Research on the Epidemiology of Disasters.

During 1994, tropical cyclones formed within seven different tropical cyclone basins, located within various parts of the Atlantic, Pacific and Indian Oceans. During the year, a total of 124 systems formed with 91 of these developing further and were named by the responsible warning centre. The strongest tropical cyclone of the year was Cyclone Geralda, which was estimated to have a minimum barometric pressure of 905 hPa (26.72 inHg). The deadliest tropical cyclone was Typhoon Fred, which caused 1,248 fatalities in China, while the costliest was Tropical Storm Sharon, which caused an estimated $5.27 billion USD in damage after striking Hong Kong, China and the Philippines. Five Category 5 tropical cyclones formed in 1994. The accumulated cyclone energy (ACE) index for the 1994, as calculated by Colorado State University was 1019 units.

The Disaster Risk Insurance and Finance in Central America Consortium (DRIFCA) is a consortium that was launched in November 2022 by the Partnership for Central America (PCA), World Bank (WB), and the World Food Programme (WFP) to identify and support climate-related agricultural insurance solutions for up to two million smallholder farmers in the Northern Triangle of Central America or North Central America (NCA) countries (Guatemala, El Salvador, and Honduras) to increase food security and financial resilience was announced at the 2022 United Nation Climate Change Conference (COP27).

References

  1. ↑ "Site de l'UCLouvain à Bruxelles". Archived from the original on 2006-10-08. Retrieved 2008-05-23.
  2. ↑ APHES – Assessing Public Health in Emergency Situations
  3. 1 2 "EM-DAT – The international disaster database". emdat.be. Centre for Research on the Epidemiology of Disasters. Retrieved 2024-11-01.
  4. ↑ "Emergency Events Database: The International Disaster Database". SDG Integration. United Nations Development Programme. Retrieved 2024-11-01.
  5. ↑ Smith, Nathan. "Research Guides: Natural Disasters". Library of Congress. Retrieved 2024-11-01.
  6. ↑ Rosvold, E.; Buhaug, H. (2021). "GDIS, a Global Dataset of Geocoded Disaster Locations". Scientific Data. 8 (61). doi:10.1038/s41597-021-00846-6. PMC   7887188 .
  7. ↑ "Geocoded Disasters (GDIS) Dataset, v1: Natural Disasters". NASA Socioeconomic and Applications Data Center (SEDAC). Retrieved 2024-11-01.
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