This briefing note examines quality of disaster impact data with special attention to the estimation of disaster affected and its use for sustainable development progress monitoring.

It argues that capturing the human impact of disasters is useful to inform development programmes, especially in countries such as East Asia or East Africa where extreme climate events are very frequent. The paper makes several recommendations, including that clear guidance is needed on measurable definitions of the disaster affected. The paper also highlights that the impact of disasters is a development issue and argues that successful development programmes will have the strongest effect on reducing the impact of disasters.

[Adapted from source]