# GDACS Disaster Alerts Scraper (`acquistion-automation/gdacs-disaster-alerts-scraper`) Actor

Scrapes GDACS disaster alerts by event type and minimum alert level. Returns each alert as a flat row with severity, country, coordinates, and event metadata.

- **URL**: https://apify.com/acquistion-automation/gdacs-disaster-alerts-scraper.md
- **Developed by:** [Acquisition Automation Co.](https://apify.com/acquistion-automation) (community)
- **Categories:** Automation, Integrations, News
- **Stats:** 2 total users, 1 monthly users, 100.0% runs succeeded, 0 bookmarks
- **User rating**: No ratings yet

## Pricing

from $7.50 / 1,000 results

This Actor is paid per event. You are not charged for the Apify platform usage, but only a fixed price for specific events.
Since this Actor supports Apify Store discounts, the price gets lower the higher subscription plan you have.

Learn more: https://docs.apify.com/actors/running/actors-in-store.md#pay-per-event

## What's an Apify Actor?

An Actor is a serverless cloud program that runs on the Apify platform. It has two run modes.
In Batch mode, an Actor accepts a well-defined JSON input, performs an action which can take anything from a few seconds to a few hours,
and optionally produces a well-defined JSON output, datasets with results, or files in key-value store.
In Standby mode, an Actor provides a web server which can be used as a website, API, or an MCP server.

Apify vocabulary and the platform model are defined once, in the agent quickstart at https://apify.com/agents.md.

## How to integrate an Actor?

If asked about integration, you help developers integrate Actors into their projects.
You adapt to their stack and deliver integrations that are safe, well-documented, and production-ready.

Do not guess an integration path. Every one of them is in the agent quickstart at https://apify.com/agents.md: the Apify MCP server, Agent Skills with the Apify CLI, the JavaScript and Python clients, the REST API, and the account-free path for an agent with no human to sign in. It also carries the rule on stating cost before the first paid run.

For examples already wired to this Actor's own input schema, see the [API](#api) section below.

Each client library has reference documentation the quickstart does not restate: [JavaScript/TypeScript](https://docs.apify.com/api/client/js/docs.md) (`npm install apify-client`) and [Python](https://docs.apify.com/api/client/python/docs.md) (`pip install apify-client`).

# README

![Acquisition Automation Co. Search less. Close more.](https://api.apify.com/v2/key-value-stores/AOdPHdOpeDpzEPS5f/records/banner.jpg)

## 🌍 GDACS Disaster Alerts Scraper

> **Export live disaster alerts from GDACS as flat rows: hazard type, alert level, country, coordinates, measured severity, the dates the event ran, and a link to the official report.** Filter by hazard type and by minimum alert level. No API key, no account, no login.

GDACS is the Global Disaster Alert and Coordination System, run jointly by the European Commission and the United Nations. It scores earthquakes, cyclones, floods, volcanoes, wildfires and droughts on a green, orange and red scale as they happen. The public view is a map and a feed, neither of which can be filtered into a table or joined against a list of your own sites. This Actor returns each active event as 25 fields, with latitude and longitude on every row.

| Who uses it | What they use the alerts for |
|---|---|
| 🏭 Buyers of businesses with physical sites | Checking whether a target's plants, warehouses or stores sit where floods and cyclones keep landing |
| 📑 Insurance and risk analysts | Building an event history by hazard type and alert level, with coordinates to map against exposure |
| 🚚 Supply chain and operations teams | Seeing which countries a supplier depends on are under an active orange or red alert |
| 📰 Newsrooms and NGOs | Watching every hazard type in one feed, with the official GDACS report one link away |

### 📋 What it does

> 💡 **Why it matters:** a site visit tells you the roof is new. It does not tell you the plant sits in a flood plain that GDACS has flagged four times. Coordinates on every row make that a join, not an argument.

- 🎚 **Filters by alert level.** `alertLevel` returns events at or above Green, Orange or Red, or all of them.
- 🌪 **Filters by hazard type.** `EQ` earthquake, `TC` tropical cyclone, `FL` flood, `VO` volcano, `WF` wildfire, `DR` drought, in any combination.
- 📍 **Puts coordinates on every row**, so events map directly against a list of addresses.
- 📏 **Keeps the measured severity and its unit**, for example a tropical depression at 64.8 with `severityUnit` of `km/h`, alongside the plain text version.
- 🗓 **Records the event window**: when it started, when it ends or ended, when GDACS last modified it, and whether it is still current.
- 📦 **One row per event episode**, the same 25 fields every run, exportable as CSV, Excel, JSON or XML.

### 📊 Output

Every alert is one flat row. `null` means GDACS publishes no value for that field on that event, which is common for `country` on an ocean cyclone.

| Field | Type | Description |
|---|---|---|
| 🖼 `imageUrl` | string | GDACS map icon for the hazard type and alert colour |
| 📛 `eventName` | string | Event name, for example `Flood in United States` or a cyclone's designation |
| 🔤 `eventType` | string | Hazard code: `EQ`, `TC`, `FL`, `VO`, `WF` or `DR` |
| 🌪 `eventTypeName` | string | Hazard in words, for example `Tropical Cyclone` |
| 🚦 `alertLevel` | string | `Green`, `Orange` or `Red` |
| 🔢 `alertScore` | number | GDACS numeric alert score behind that colour |
| 🆔 `eventId` | integer | GDACS event id |
| 🧩 `episodeId` | integer | Episode number within the event, since long events are updated in episodes |
| 🏳 `country` | string | Country GDACS names for the event, `null` where it names none |
| 🔠 `iso3` | string | ISO 3166 three letter country code |
| 📍 `latitude` | number | Event latitude |
| 📍 `longitude` | number | Event longitude |
| 📏 `severity` | number | Measured severity value, meaning depends on hazard type |
| 📝 `severityText` | string | Severity in words, for example `Tropical Depression (maximum wind speed of 65 km/h)` |
| 📐 `severityUnit` | string | Unit for `severity`, for example `km/h`, empty where the hazard has none |
| 🟢 `fromDate` | string | Start of the event window |
| 🔴 `toDate` | string | End of the event window |
| 🔄 `dateModified` | string | When GDACS last updated the record |
| ✅ `isCurrent` | boolean | Whether the event is still current |
| 📄 `description` | string | GDACS one line description |
| 🛰 `source` | string | Monitoring source behind the alert, for example `GLOFAS` or `NOAA` |
| 🌐 `affectedCountries` | array | Countries listed as affected, empty where none are |
| 🔗 `reportUrl` | string | Link to the full GDACS report for that event and episode |
| 🕒 `scrapedAt` | string | ISO timestamp of collection |
| ⚠️ `error` | string | `null` on a normal row |

#### Example rows

```json
{
  "imageUrl": "https://www.gdacs.org/images/gdacs_icons/maps/Green/FL.png",
  "eventName": "Flood in United States",
  "eventType": "FL",
  "eventTypeName": "Flood",
  "alertLevel": "Green",
  "alertScore": 1,
  "eventId": 1103888,
  "episodeId": 91,
  "country": "United States",
  "iso3": "USA",
  "latitude": 41.119,
  "longitude": -73.3711,
  "severity": 0,
  "severityText": "Magnitude 0 ",
  "severityUnit": "",
  "fromDate": "2026-05-19T01:00:00",
  "toDate": "2026-09-15T01:00:00",
  "dateModified": "2026-09-14T10:27:56",
  "isCurrent": true,
  "description": "Flood in United States",
  "source": "GLOFAS",
  "affectedCountries": [
    "United States"
  ],
  "reportUrl": "https://www.gdacs.org/report.aspx?eventid=1103888&episodeid=91&eventtype=FL",
  "scrapedAt": "2026-09-14T16:35:20.552Z",
  "error": null
}
```

```json
{
  "imageUrl": "https://www.gdacs.org/images/gdacs_icons/maps/Green/TC.png",
  "eventName": "FIFTEEN-E-26",
  "eventType": "TC",
  "eventTypeName": "Tropical Cyclone",
  "alertLevel": "Green",
  "alertScore": 1,
  "eventId": 1001321,
  "episodeId": 4,
  "country": null,
  "iso3": null,
  "latitude": 16.3,
  "longitude": -119.7,
  "severity": 64.8144,
  "severityText": "Tropical Depression (maximum wind speed of 65 km/h)",
  "severityUnit": "km/h",
  "fromDate": "2026-09-13T21:00:00",
  "toDate": "2026-09-14T15:00:00",
  "dateModified": "2026-09-14T14:45:48",
  "isCurrent": true,
  "description": "Tropical Cyclone FIFTEEN-E-26",
  "source": "NOAA",
  "affectedCountries": [],
  "reportUrl": "https://www.gdacs.org/report.aspx?eventid=1001321&episodeid=4&eventtype=TC",
  "scrapedAt": "2026-09-14T16:35:20.671Z",
  "error": null
}
```

### ✨ Why choose this Actor

| | What you get |
|---|---|
| **An official source** | GDACS is operated by the European Commission and the United Nations, not by an aggregator reposting headlines. |
| **Coordinates on every row** | Latitude and longitude come with each event, so a list of sites becomes a distance calculation. |
| **Two filters that compose** | Hazard type and minimum alert level apply together, so a run can ask only for orange and red cyclones. |
| **No credentials** | The GDACS feed is public. No API key, no account, no login. |
| **You pay per row** | No subscription. A filter that matches nothing costs nothing. |

### 🚀 How to use it

1. [Create a free Apify account](https://console.apify.com/sign-up). New accounts start with $5 of credit.
2. Open the Actor and select **Try for free**.
3. Pick the hazard types you care about in `eventTypes`, or leave it empty for all of them.
4. Set `alertLevel` and `maxItems`.
5. Select **Start**, then export from the **Dataset** tab as CSV, Excel, JSON or XML.

A first run:

```json
{
  "maxItems": 10,
  "alertLevel": "Any"
}
```

Serious weather events only:

```json
{
  "eventTypes": ["TC", "FL"],
  "alertLevel": "Orange",
  "maxItems": 500
}
```

Earthquakes at every level:

```json
{
  "eventTypes": ["EQ"],
  "alertLevel": "Any",
  "maxItems": 1000
}
```

### ⚙️ Input

| Field | Required | Description |
|---|---|---|
| `eventTypes` | No | Hazard types to include: `EQ` earthquake, `TC` tropical cyclone, `FL` flood, `VO` volcano, `WF` wildfire, `DR` drought. Empty returns every type |
| `alertLevel` | No | Minimum alert level: `Any`, `Green`, `Orange` or `Red`. Green is the lowest severity, Red the highest |
| `maxItems` | No | Maximum alerts to collect in a run. Free plans are capped at 10 as a preview, paid plans go to 1,000,000 |

### 💰 Pricing

Pay per result. No subscription, and no Apify platform usage on top.

| Apify plan | Free | Bronze | Silver | Gold | Platinum | Diamond |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Per alert row | $0.0085 | $0.00817 | $0.00783 | $0.0075 | $0.0075 | $0.0075 |

| Rows collected | Cost on the Free plan |
|---|---|
| 100 | $0.85 |
| 1,000 | $8.50 |
| 10,000 | $85.00 |

**Free plan runs** return up to 10 rows as a preview. Any paid Apify plan lifts that to 1,000,000 per run.

### 🔌 Integrate with any app

The dataset is available through the Apify API as soon as the run finishes. Use `run-sync-get-dataset-items` for a one-shot call, webhooks to trigger what happens next, or the Make, Zapier, Airbyte and LangChain integrations listed on the Actor page. A scheduled run plus a webhook is enough to post new orange and red alerts into a channel.

### 🤖 Use with an AI agent

Give an agent live access to the alert feed over the Model Context Protocol:

```bash
claude mcp add --transport http apify "https://mcp.apify.com?tools=acquistion-automation/gdacs-disaster-alerts-scraper"
```

Then ask it in plain language which events are active in a country and read the rows back.

### ❓ Frequently asked questions

**Why is `severity` zero on a flood row?**
Severity is hazard specific. GDACS reports a magnitude for earthquakes and a wind speed for cyclones, but for some flood records it publishes no numeric value and the row comes back as `0` with an empty `severityUnit`. Read `severityText` and `alertScore` on those rows.

**What is the difference between `eventId` and `episodeId`?**
An event that runs for weeks is updated in episodes. `eventId` identifies the event, `episodeId` identifies which update this row is. The pair is what `reportUrl` points at.

**Why is `country` empty on some events?**
Cyclones and earthquakes out at sea are not assigned to a country. The coordinates are still there, and `affectedCountries` fills once GDACS attributes the event to land.

**Does this return historical disasters?**
It returns what the GDACS feed is publishing, which is the current event set. Schedule the Actor and append the runs if you want a history of your own.

**How often does the data change?**
GDACS updates continuously as monitoring sources report. `dateModified` tells you when each record was last touched, and `isCurrent` tells you whether it is still live.

**What can I export?**
CSV, Excel, JSON and XML from the run page, or JSON straight from the API.

### 🔗 More from Acquisition Automation Co.

- [SAM.gov Contract Opportunities Scraper](https://apify.com/acquistion-automation/sam-gov-contracts-scraper)
- [USCG PSIX Vessel Registry Scraper](https://apify.com/acquistion-automation/uscg-psix-vessel-incidents-scraper)
- [IRS Exempt Organizations Scraper](https://apify.com/acquistion-automation/irs-eo-master-file-scraper)
- [AirLive Aviation News Scraper](https://apify.com/acquistion-automation/airlive-aviation-news-rss-scraper)
- [BizBuySell Scraper](https://apify.com/acquistion-automation/bizbuysell-scraper)

### About Acquisition Automation Co.

We build automation for people buying businesses. The repetitive part of an acquisition search, checking listings, pulling public records, tracking owners and assets, is work a machine should do, so the buyer's time goes into judging deals instead of collecting them.

We add new Actors regularly. If there is a source you need and do not see here, tell us.

### 🆘 Support

Open an issue in the **Issues** tab of this Actor with your run ID, the input you used, and what you expected to get back.

### ⚠️ Disclaimer

This Actor is independent and is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or sponsored by GDACS, the European Commission or the United Nations. It collects only publicly available data, and it is not a substitute for an official emergency warning. You are responsible for using that data in compliance with the source's terms of service and applicable law.

# Actor input Schema

## `eventTypes` (type: `array`):

Hazard types to include. Leave empty to return every event type. EQ = earthquake, TC = tropical cyclone, FL = flood, VO = volcano, WF = wildfire, DR = drought.

## `alertLevel` (type: `string`):

Only include events at or above this alert level. Green is the lowest severity, Red the highest. Leave on 'Any' to include all levels.

## `maxItems` (type: `integer`):

Free users: Limited to 10 items (preview). Paid users: Optional, max 1,000,000

## Actor input object example

```json
{
  "alertLevel": "Any",
  "maxItems": 10
}
```

# Actor output Schema

## `results` (type: `string`):

No description

# API

You can run this Actor programmatically using our API. Below are code examples in JavaScript, Python, and CLI, as well as the OpenAPI specification and MCP server setup.

## JavaScript example

```javascript
import { ApifyClient } from 'apify-client';

// Initialize the ApifyClient with your Apify API token
// Replace the '<YOUR_API_TOKEN>' with your token
const client = new ApifyClient({
    token: '<YOUR_API_TOKEN>',
});

// Prepare Actor input
const input = {
    "maxItems": 10
};

// Run the Actor and wait for it to finish
const run = await client.actor("acquistion-automation/gdacs-disaster-alerts-scraper").call(input);

// Fetch and print Actor results from the run's dataset (if any)
console.log('Results from dataset');
console.log(`💾 Check your data here: https://console.apify.com/storage/datasets/${run.defaultDatasetId}`);
const { items } = await client.dataset(run.defaultDatasetId).listItems();
items.forEach((item) => {
    console.dir(item);
});

// 📚 Want to learn more 📖? Go to → https://docs.apify.com/api/client/js/docs

```

## Python example

```python
from apify_client import ApifyClient

# Initialize the ApifyClient with your Apify API token
# Replace '<YOUR_API_TOKEN>' with your token.
client = ApifyClient("<YOUR_API_TOKEN>")

# Prepare the Actor input
run_input = { "maxItems": 10 }

# Run the Actor and wait for it to finish
run = client.actor("acquistion-automation/gdacs-disaster-alerts-scraper").call(run_input=run_input)

# Fetch and print Actor results from the run's dataset (if there are any)
print(f"💾 Check your data here: https://console.apify.com/storage/datasets/{run.default_dataset_id}")
for item in client.dataset(run.default_dataset_id).iterate_items():
    print(item)

# 📚 Want to learn more 📖? Go to → https://docs.apify.com/api/client/python/docs/quick-start

```

## CLI example

```bash
echo '{
  "maxItems": 10
}' |
apify call acquistion-automation/gdacs-disaster-alerts-scraper --silent --output-dataset

```

## MCP server setup

```json
{
    "mcpServers": {
        "apify": {
            "type": "http",
            "url": "https://mcp.apify.com/?tools=fetch-actor-details,acquistion-automation/gdacs-disaster-alerts-scraper"
        }
    }
}
```

The hosted server signs you in with OAuth on first connect, so no API token belongs in this config. Clients without OAuth support can send an `Authorization: Bearer <APIFY_API_TOKEN>` header instead, using a token from API & Integrations in Apify Console (https://console.apify.com/settings/integrations).

## OpenAPI specification

Download the OpenAPI definition: https://api.apify.com/v2/actors/cHNLtxuJNWKu2WAZw/builds/GqmTc8w0NeI9ChVYA/openapi.json