Overview of the special issue on the development of disaster statistics

At the Third UN World Conference on Disaster Risk Reduction (UNWCDRR) held in March 2015 in Sendai City, Japan, the Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction 2015–2030 (SFDRR), containing seven global targets, was adopted by 187 UN member states. With its outcome-oriented but non-numerical targets, quantitative approaches for monitoring disaster damage and loss by national governments became mandatory. The Global Centre for Disaster Statistics (GCDS) in Tohoku University was established in April 2015. The GCDS is expected to contribute to the evidence-based policy making by national and/or local governments. In addition, the GCDS aims at creating a synergy effect among academia, the UN organizations, and private companies in order to provide unprecedented values to all stakeholders worldwide. Under such circumstances, the special issue aims at publishing the research results obtained so far from the relevant studies that have been mainly conducted at the GCDS. The guest editors of the special issue are pleased to publish 13 valuable academic articles closely related to the activities of the GCDS, contributing to the development of disaster statistics. Based on the features of the 13 articles contained in the special issue, there seems to be three major categories of research questions. The first one is to investigate disaster statistics and/or global disaster-related databases. The articles of the first category contribute to the clarification of the characteristics specific to disaster statistics. The second one is to utilize disaster statistics in order to develop the existing discipline-based research. The articles of the second category are quite beneficial for establishing a new possibility of applying disaster statistics for the research so far. The third one is to analyze a variety of issues by means of questionnaire surveys. The articles of the third category are issue-oriented and interdisciplinary. Last but not least, the guest editors hope that the special issue would certainly contribute to the literature of disaster statistics and accelerate their development.