ifo GAME – the Geological and Meteorological Events Database

The Scope of ifo GAME

ifo GAME comprises country-level data on a monthly or yearly basis for different types of events and captures their physical intensity. It covers the whole world and various types of natural disasters. The data are assembled from millions of observations worldwide with respective measures of intensity and country location, dating back to 1979. ifo GAME covers earthquakes and volcanic eruptions, and translates daily weather station, satellite and hurricane track data into meteorological events (droughts, floods, storms, heat and cold waves). It provides a comprehensive documentation of this information.

The data are linked with national socioeconomic indicators and, where available, human toll and damage information from the EM-DAT database (http://www.emdat.be/database).

Virtually all earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, storms, floods, droughts, and extreme temperature events reported by EM-DAT can be also found in ifo GAME, but the opposite is not true: out of 10,448 earthquakes scoring at least 5 on the Richter scale, for example, EM-DAT reports only 6.2% of the events covered in ifo GAME. Its coverage rate is highest for the strongest earthquakes (40.9%), but falls quickly with decreasing earthquake intensity.

The matched event-based ifo GAME and EM-DAT data report the physical intensity and the monetary or human costs of natural disasters. A focus on large disasters, as defined in the EM-DAT database, reveals the average strength of a disaster. Large earthquakes have a mean Richter scale of 6.2, while large volcanic eruptions have a mean VEI of 3.44. Storms are listed as large-scale with a mean wind speed of 72.66 knots, a flood is large with a mean divergence in monthly precipitation of 0.389 mm, droughts are large-scale with a negative mean difference in monthly precipitation of 0.360 mm, and extreme temperature events have a mean monthly difference of 0.141 °C. While droughts cause the highest death toll and affected the greatest share of the population, storms are, on average, responsible for the largest monetary damages.

Using ifo GAME

Before using the data contained in the ifo GAME database, users need to understand how the databased is structured. The features of the ifo GAME database are documented in the codebook section, as well as in the following paper:

Felbermayr, Gabriel and Gröschl, Jasmin, 2014. “Naturally Negative: The Growth Effects of Natural Disasters”, Journal of Development Economics 111, 92–106.

One of the biggest challenges when working with raw geological or meteorological data is to bring them to the country level for economic analysis, and to ensure comparability within countries and over time. Thus, before using ifo GAME, please be sure to read the codebook section and Felbermayr and Groeschl (2014) carefully to familiarise yourself with the procedures adopted to obtain the monthly and yearly country level datasets.

ifo GAME stores its data in STATA (.dta) format. The codebook section provides information on original sources, from which the raw ifo GAME data have been drawn, as well as the names, definitions and labels for each variable contained in ifo GAME.

Conditions of Use

The data are provided free-of-charge. We have attempted to document the data as fully as possible, including references to the original primary sources from which the data are drawn. By downloading data from ifo GAME, you assume full responsibility for their use. We cannot provide assistance with issues of research design or statistical analysis.

If you are fully convinced that you have discovered an error in the aggregated monthly or yearly data and have checked this error against the original sources, please contact us at groeschl@ifo.de.

Data Download

ifo GAME – die geologische und meteorologische Event-Datenbank

How to Cite the Ifo GAME Database

When using monthly or yearly Ifo GAME data in your work, please reference it as follows:

Felbermayr, Gabriel and Gröschl, Jasmin, 2014. “Naturally Negative: The Growth Effects of Natural Disasters”, Journal of Development Economics 111, 92–106.

We would also be grateful if you could send an electronic copy of any work featuring data from the Ifo GAME database to us at groeschl@ifo.de.