Attorney-General’s Department Disasters Database

The Disasters Database contains records of all natural and non-natural disasters within Australia, and outside Australia where a number of Australians have been affected, dating from 1622 to the present day. To view disaster information, please select one of the browse options on the left.

The importance of maintaining disaster records is nationally recognised and has been reinforced in the Council of Australian Government’s report ‘Natural disasters in Australia: reforming mitigation, relief and recovery arrangements’, in which Commonwealth, States and Territories agree to ‘establish a nationally consistent system of data collection, research and analysis to ensure a sound knowledge base on natural disasters and disaster mitigation’.

Government agencies, research bodies, educational institutions, emergency service agencies and interested members of the public use the database for a variety of reasons and, to that extent, every effort is made to ensure that the information is accurate and valid. However, many of the early records are understandably incomplete. Also, determining loss assessment data is a protracted process, which means that some fields in the Database are continually being updated.

The definitions for ‘disaster’ and ‘emergency’ used in the Database are those from the Australian Emergency Management Glossary, Manual 3, Australian Emergency Manual series.

‘A serious disruption to community life which threatens or causes death or injury in that community and/or damage to property which is beyond the day-to-day capacity of the prescribed statutory authorities and which requires special mobilisation and organisation of resources other than those normally available to those authorities.’

‘An event, actual or imminent, which endangers or threatens to endanger life, property or the environment, and which requires a significant and coordinated response.’

Natural, technological and human-caused events are included in the Database. These events meet at least one of the following criteria:

• three or more deaths
• 20 injuries or illnesses
• significant damage to property, infrastructure, agriculture or the environment; or disruption to essential services, commerce or industry; or trauma or dislocation of the community at an estimated total cost of A$10 million or more.

• Blank data fields indicate that insufficient validated information is available. Generally, insurance loss figures are not available prior to 1967; therefore, total estimated costs (which are partly based on insurance losses) for pre-1967 events tend to be less accurate than those since that date.
• 'Commercial / Industry Cost': material, production and service income losses incurred by industry (including mining, livestock and agriculture), commerce (including tourism) and government.
• Cost Variations: costs currently in the Database represent the A$ value at the time of the disaster; therefore, comparing event costs may require the inflation differential to be taken into account.
• Costs not currently taken into account: emergency response by emergency services; local, State, Territory and Commonwealth governments; non-government organisations; local government clean-up; remedial and environmental damage costs (including pollution of foreshores and riverbanks and beach erosion); community dislocation; loss of jobs; rehabilitation/recovery services; and basic medical and funeral costs associated with injuries and deaths.
• Event description: the description of the event is a summary only. Linkages to other relevant documents will be included where possible e.g. coronial inquiry outcomes.
• Events that overlap Categories (i.e. cyclone and tsunami) are referred to as 'Complex Emergencies' in the Category view.
• GLIDE number: a GLobal IDEntifier number is a globally common, unique number assigned to disaster events by the Centre for Research on the Epidemiology of Disasters, Brussels, Belgium. Some events on the Database have a GLIDE number.
• 'Total Cost': Insured Cost - all insurance losses (based on figures from the Insurance Council of Australia). Loss Assessment Cost - all uninsured losses including repair/replacement costs of private property, public buildings (including historic/heritage), assets and records, damaged infrastructure/lifelines (e.g. water, sewerage, power, communications, gas, roads, railways, bridges, paths, driveways, fences).

The Database has recently been upgraded to improve its functionality. We welcome your feedback on the new format. Any feedback about database usability, data accuracy or exclusion of events is appreciated and can be sent to:

disastersdatabase@ag.gov.au

The Attorney-General's Department is not responsible for any use to which the data may be put. While the Attorney-General's Department takes every effort to check and validate the data, the contents of the database are distilled from reports from various external sources over which we have no control. In some cases, due to lack of original records, the existing data may be incomplete or inaccurate.