SHELDUS™ Spatial Hazard Events and Losses Database for the United States
SHELDUS™ is a county-level hazard data set for the U.S. for 18 different natural hazard events types such thunderstorms, hurricanes, floods, wildfires, and tornados.
For each event the database includes the beginning date, location (county and state), property losses, crop losses, injuries, and fatalities that affected each county. The data set does not include Puerto Rico, Guam, or other U.S. territories.
The data were derived from several existing national data sources such as National Climatic Data Center’s monthly Storm Data publications and NGDC’s Tsunami Event Database. Originally, SHELDUS™ contained only those events that generated more than $50,000 in damage or at least one death. However, they are currently in the process of removing these thresholds and are adding every loss causing (monetary and human) event as reported in the data sources used by SHELDUS™.
With the release of SHELDUS™ 7.0, the database includes every loss causing and/or deadly event between 1960 through 1975 and from 1995 onward. Between 1976 and 1995, SHELDUS™ reflects only events that caused at least one fatality or more than $50,000 in property or crop damages. Future releases of SHELDUS™ will contain more detailed information for the time period 1976 through 1995.
SHELDUS™ is provided by The Hazards and Vulnerability Research Institute (HVRI), an interdisciplinary research and graduate and undergraduate training center focused on the development of theory, data, metrics, methods, applications, and spatial analytical models for understanding the newly emergent field of hazard vulnerability science.
The new version of SHELDUS™ contains more than 600,000 records and spans the years from 1960 through 2008. New to this version are loss data from January 1, 2008 through December 31, 2008 as well as events of less than $50,000 in property or crop damages between 1960 and 1975.
See SHELDUS™ Spatial Hazard Events and Losses Database for the United States.
Tags: costs, hazard mapping, Hazards and Vulnerability Research Institute, HVRI, losses, mapping, natural hazards, SHELDUS, spatial analysis
