Data Sources/ThinkHazard

ThinkHazard

ThinkHazard! offers accessible natural hazard risk assessments and guidance for over 190 countries. Use it to identify risks like floods, earthquakes, and heatwaves for planning and development projects.

Disaster Response

Support rapid disaster assessment, emergency management, and recovery efforts with real-time and historical hazard data.

Infrastructure Development

Plan, monitor, and manage roads, utilities, and buildings using topographic, cadastral, and engineering data.

Humanitarian Aid

Coordinate disaster relief, refugee support, and development programs using population and crisis data.

ThinkHazard! is designed for a different audience than most data sources on this page. Developed by GFDRR and the World Bank, it translates complex global hazard models into simple risk ratings (low to very high) with actionable guidance notes — making it a tool for project managers, policymakers, and development practitioners who need to understand natural hazard exposure without GIS expertise or access to raw spatial data.

For GIS professionals, ThinkHazard serves as a rapid screening step: before investing time in detailed spatial analysis, check ThinkHazard to quickly identify which hazards are relevant for a project location and which can be deprioritized.

ThinkHazard is not a GIS data source in the traditional sense — it provides risk summaries and recommendations, not downloadable spatial layers. But it links to the underlying hazard models and datasets that its assessments are based on, and those sources can be downloaded for detailed analysis in Atlas, QGIS, or ArcGIS.

This makes ThinkHazard a useful entry point into the global hazard data landscape: it tells you what risks matter at a location and points you toward the authoritative datasets behind each rating. For organizations conducting due diligence on infrastructure investments, site selection, or development projects in unfamiliar regions, ThinkHazard provides the multi-hazard overview that helps scope the detailed spatial work that follows.

Frequently Asked Questions

ThinkHazard! is a World Bank platform that provides simplified natural hazard risk information for any location worldwide, covering floods, earthquakes, tsunamis, cyclones, droughts, wildfires, extreme heat, volcanic eruptions, and landslides.

Yes. ThinkHazard is completely free to use and requires no account or registration.

Non-specialist users such as urban planners, project managers, policymakers, and development practitioners who need to understand hazard risks without deep technical expertise.

ThinkHazard primarily provides risk summaries and guidance, not raw GIS layers. However, it links to underlying data sources where you can download the spatial data used in risk assessments.

ThinkHazard provides risk assessments for over 190 countries, down to subnational administrative levels.

Details

CoverageGlobal
Layer TypeTabular
Update FrequencyVaries by hazard model
Categories
Demographic
Visit sourceUse data in Atlas

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