SHELDUS™ | Spatial Hazard Events and Losses Database for the United States
SHELDUS™ is a county-level hazard data set for the U.S. for 18 different natural
hazard events types such thunderstorms, hurricanes, floods, wildfires, and tornados.
For each event the database includes the beginning date, location (county and state),
property losses, crop losses, injuries, and fatalities that affected each county. The
data set does not include Puerto Rico, Guam, or other U.S. territories.
The data were derived from several existing national data sources such as National
Climatic Data Center's monthly Storm Data publications and NGDC's Tsunami Event Database.
Originally, SHELDUS™ contained only those events that generated more than $50,000 in
damage or at least one death. However, we are currently in the process of removing
these thresholds and are adding every loss causing (monetary and human) event as reported
in the data sources used by SHELDUS™.
With the release of SHELDUS™ 7.0, the database
includes every loss causing and/or deadly event between 1960 through 1975 and from 1995
onward. Between 1976 and 1995, SHELDUS™ reflects only events that caused at least one
fatality or more than $50,000 in property or crop damages. Future releases of SHELDUS™
will contain more detailed information for the time period 1976 through 1995.
Data and maps were compiled and geo-referenced by the Hazards & Vulnerability and
Research Institute at the University of South Carolina. This database was supported
by grants from the National Science Foundation (Grant No. 99053252 and 0220712) and
the University of South Carolina's Office of the Vice President for Research.
Download SHELDUS™ 7.0 data
here.
The new version of SHELDUS™ contains more than 600,000 records and spans the
years from 1960 through 2008.
New to this version are loss data from January 1, 2008 through December 31,
2008 as well as events of less than $50,000 in property or crop damages between 1960 and 1975.