Projects
CRED's research focuses on humanitarian and emergency situations with a major impacts on human health. This includes all types of natural disasters such as earthquakes, floods, windstorms, famines and droughts; and man-made disasters creating mass displacement of people from civil strife and conflicts.
The Centre focuses on health aspects and the burden of disease araising from disasters and complex emergencies. CRED also undertakes research in the broader aspects of humanitarian crises; such as human rights and humanitarian law, socio-economic and environmental issues, early warning systems, the special needs of women and children and mental health care.
EM-DAT: The International Disaster Database
CRED has a long history of standarized data compilation, validation and analysis. It provides free and open access to its data through its website. One of CRED's core data products is the EM-DAT disaster database.
EM-DAT contains worlwide data on the occurrence and impact of natural disasters from 1900 to the present. The database is free and fully searchable through the website, also allowing users to download available data.
EM-DAT provides an objective basis for vulnerability assessments and rational decision-making in disaster situations. For example, it helps policymakers identify disaster types that are the most common in a given country and have had significant historical impacts on specific human populations. Where resources are limited, these choices can be critical in saving human lives and property though customized disaster planning adapred to account for local vulnerabilities.
I addition to providing information on the human impact of disasters, such as the number of people killed, injured or affected, EM-DAT provides disaster-related economic damage estimates and disaster-specific international aid contributions.
CE-DAT: The Human Impact of Complex Emergencies
CE-DAT is a global searcheable database on complex humanitarian emergencies. This database serves as an essential source of nutritional, health and mortality data for rational decision-making in disaster situations. It promotes the effectiveness of international policy on response and prevention through evidence-based trends analysis and epidemiological briefs.
The database provides access to a serie of health indicators that have been collected in the field by relief agencies and research institutes. Some of the indicators included in the database are crude, infant and under-five mortality rates; acute and chronic malnutrition rates; and vaccination coverage for measles, polio, DTP and tuberculosis.
While compiling accurate and exact data is a desirable goal, the circumstances in conflict-affected regions make this level of data quality not always realistic. CRED provides technical support to field agencies to ensure the use of standardized, technically-sound sampling and survey methodologies, and provides training and expert supervision for data validation and analyses.
EM-BIB: The Emergency Management Bibliography Database
Since 1988, CRED has maintened a bibliographic database containing references related to many aspects of disasters and conflicts worlwide. The Centre now offers a multidisciplinary library containing some 15,000 documents, articles and books on disaster and conflict-related topics.
MICRODIS: Integrated Health Social and Economic Impacts of Extreme Events: Evidence, Methods and Tools
The Centre implements operational research projects aimed at improving the understanding of health vulnerabilities and risk factors for disaster impacts.
CRED carries out multi-partner and multi-country research projects in Asia, Africa, and in Europe. A recent example is the MICRODIS project, a 16-member research consortium funded by the European Union and led by CRED that aims to develop new methods and tools to measure the health, social and economic impacts of natural disasters.
MICROCON: A Micro Level Analysis of Violent Conflict
MICROCON, or 'A Micro Level Analysis of Violent Conflict' is a five-year research programme funded by the European Commission. It takes an innovative micro level, multidisciplinary approach to the study of the conflict cycle.
Almost one third of the world's population lives in conflict-affected low-income countries. At a fundamental level, conflict originates from people's behaviour and how they interact with society and their environment-from its 'micro' foundations. Yet most conflict research and policy focuses on 'macro' perspectives. MICROCON seeks to redress this balance