Wrapper for the UN OCHA ReliefWeb Disaster Events API

This package provides functionality to access and manage the application programming interface (API) of the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs’ (OCHA) ReliefWeb disaster events. It requires a minimal number of dependencies. The function disastr.api() makes it easy to retrieve a user-defined sample of disaster events from ReliefWeb, enabling a seamless integration of regular data updates into the research work flow.

Installation

You can install the released version of disastr.api from CRAN with:

install.packages("disastr.api") # downloads and installs the package from CRAN

You can install the development version from GitLab with:

remotes::install_gitlab("chris-dworschak/disastr.api") # downloads and installs the package from GitLab

Example

Using disastr.api is straight forward. To download data on, for example, the last 20 disaster events, you can supply:

library(disastr.api) # loads the package
#> 
#> This package may be cited as:
#> Dworschak, Christoph. 2021. "Disastr.api: Wrapper for the UN OCHA
#> ReliefWeb Disaster Events API." R package. CRAN version 1.0.5.
#> For the development version of this package, visit <https://gitlab.com/chris-dworschak/disastr.api/>

my.data.frame <- disastr.api( # stores retrieved disaster events in object my.data.frame
  limit = 20)
#> Your disaster event data request was successful.

head(my.data.frame) # returns the first five observations of the ACLED sample
#>      id                      date
#> 1 50617 2021-02-17T00:00:00+00:00
#> 2 50594 2021-02-07T00:00:00+00:00
#> 3 50599 2021-01-28T00:00:00+00:00
#> 4 50579 2021-01-18T00:00:00+00:00
#> 5 50575 2021-01-17T00:00:00+00:00
#> 6 50573 2021-01-15T00:00:00+00:00
#>                                                    country
#> 1                               Iran (Islamic Republic of)
#> 2                         Democratic Republic of the Congo
#> 3                                                   Guinea
#> 4                                     Syrian Arab Republic
#> 5 Eswatini, Madagascar, Mozambique, South Africa, Zimbabwe
#> 6                                                Indonesia
#>                                  name                     event  status
#> 1         Iran: Earthquake - Feb 2021                Earthquake current
#> 2 DR Congo: Ebola Outbreak - Feb 2021                  Epidemic current
#> 3   Guinea: Ebola Outbreak - Jan 2021                  Epidemic current
#> 4            Syria: Floods - Jan 2021 Flood, Severe Local Storm current
#> 5  Tropical Cyclone Eloise - Jan 2021   Flood, Tropical Cyclone current
#> 6    Indonesia: Earthquake - Jan 2021                Earthquake current
#>                                         url
#> 1 https://reliefweb.int/taxonomy/term/50617
#> 2 https://reliefweb.int/taxonomy/term/50594
#> 3 https://reliefweb.int/taxonomy/term/50599
#> 4 https://reliefweb.int/taxonomy/term/50579
#> 5 https://reliefweb.int/taxonomy/term/50575
#> 6 https://reliefweb.int/taxonomy/term/50573