Global Disaster Alerts
Events tracked by GDACS, the Global Disaster Alert and Coordination System run by the UN and the European Commission. Each event carries GDACS's own green, orange or red alert level. It fills the gap left by US-only weather alerts: the same kind of official, located hazard record for every country, with an estimate of likely humanitarian impact.
Current reading
No reading available in this range. This is not a zero reading.
Global.
- Collector availability
- Unavailable
- Collection freshness
- No successful collection recorded.
Historical comparison
Not enough data yet. No observations are available in this range.
Interpretation
Not enough data yet. The available history cannot establish whether this reading is typical or unusual.
- An active cyclone or flood season
- A cluster of hazards in one region
Not established. This detector is descriptive: it records hazards that are already happening. Source-reported severity, statistical deviation and real-world risk are different questions. This reading does not independently support a hypothesis about intent or cause.
Evidence and limitations
- Cadence and latency
- Collection is scheduled every 30 minutes. Collection cadence is not source latency; no measured end-to-end latency is provided here. Source publication and revisions can delay what is visible.
- Seasonal cycles (monsoon, cyclone season) raise counts every year
- GDACS revising or merging events
- Alert levels are GDACS's automated impact estimates, not damage reports, and can change as an event develops.
- Positions are event centroids; floods, droughts and cyclones cover far larger areas.
- Earthquakes here overlap with the USGS detector; they are the same physical events seen by a different source.
- Droughts last months, so they sit in the active count for a long time.
Technical detail
- Measurement definition
- Each observation is one GDACS event, updated as new episodes arrive. The value is GDACS's severity figure (magnitude, wind speed, area, depending on event type). The number we watch is how many events are currently active.
- Raw metric
- active_events
- Method
- Every run reads all GDACS events from the last 14 days. Events are stored once under GDACS's event id; later episodes update the same record. An event counts as active until three days after GDACS last reports it. The count of active events is recorded as a snapshot sample.
- Stored observations
- 0
Normal versus unusual
A baseline cannot yet be established. The observatory needs more history before it can say what "normal" looks like for this signal, so no anomaly score is shown.
The label the publishing agency assigns (e.g. NWS 'Severe'). Shown verbatim.
How far today's value sits from this signal's own history. Says nothing about consequences.
A judgment the observatory does not make. Consult official sources for safety decisions.
Observations in range
No observations stored for this range.
Recent collection runs
- · running · 0 stored
- · running · 0 stored
- · failed · 0 stored · Interrupted before finishing (no result recorded)
- · failed · 0 stored · Interrupted before finishing (no result recorded)
How this works
Every 30 minutes we read the public event list from GDACS, a disaster alert service run by the UN and the European Commission. It covers earthquakes, tropical cyclones, floods, volcanoes, droughts and wildfires everywhere in the world.
Each event keeps the alert colour GDACS gives it: green, orange or red. That colour is GDACS's own estimate of likely humanitarian impact; we show it as reported and never change it. "Normal" is the number of active events at the same hour on earlier days (at least a week of history).
Limits: map points mark the centre of an event, not its full extent. Big earthquakes appear here and in the USGS signal, because they are the same events.
FAQ
- Does red mean danger to me?
- No. Red means GDACS expects a large humanitarian impact somewhere for that event. It says nothing about any other place.
- Why does a drought stay on for weeks?
- Because it is still going on. GDACS keeps updating long-running events.