The Spatial Hazard Events and Losses Database for the United States (SHELDUS): Capabilities, Biases, and Technical Support

The Spatial Hazard Events and Losses Database for the United States (SHELDUS™) is acomprehensive county-level database of natural hazard events and the direct economic andhuman losses across the United States from 1960 to the present. Developed initially by theHazards and Vulnerability Research Institute at the University of South Carolina, SHELDUS ismaintained by the Arizona State University’s (ASU) Center for Emergency Management andHomeland Security. SHELDUS integrates data on property and crop losses, injuries, and fatalitiesfor 18 categories of natural hazards, providing an essential resource for researchers, planners,and policymakers interested in hazard impacts and community resilience.

Despite its broad utility, hazard loss databases such as SHELDUS are subject to systematic biasesthat can influence interpretation and analytic outcomes. These biases arise from how events arerecorded, inclusion thresholds, data sources, and temporal inconsistencies, leading tosystematic under- or overrepresentation of certain hazards, time periods, or regions if notaccounted for in the analysis. Some of these biases are the consequence of data managementchoices (e.g., treatment of ranges, geography, etc.), and affect how users may interpret losspatterns over space and time.

To enhance the translational value of SHELDUS and develop a more sound data managementstrategy, SHELDUS has partnered with the ASU Decision Theater for interactive visualization,data integration, and scenario exploration.

The Decision Theater’s research engineering support has enabled the development of anadvanced, web-accessible version of SHELDUS that allows users to access the data from anylocation while providing the project team with scalable tools for managing users, activity andsubscriptions.

Together, SHELDUS and the Decision Theater offer the nation’s premier disaster loss databaseand exemplify a successful public information technology supported by professional researchengineering services.

Join us on Wednesday, Feb. 4 at 1pm MST on Zoom!