The Emergency Events Database - EM-DAT, created and maintained by the Université Catholique de Louvain in Belgium. The main objective of the database is to serve the purposes of humanitarian action at national and international levels. For example, it allows one to decide whether floods in a given country are more significant in terms of humans impact than are earthquakes, or whether a country is more vulnerable than another. EM-DAT provides an objective basis for vulnerability assessment and rational decision-making in disaster situations. For example, it helps policymakers identify the disaster types that are most common in a given country and that have had significant historical impacts on human populations. In 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.