Inter-American Development Bank
facebook
twitter
youtube
linkedin
instagram
Abierto al públicoBeyond BordersCaribbean Development TrendsCiudades SosteniblesEnergía para el FuturoEnfoque EducaciónFactor TrabajoGente SaludableGestión fiscalGobernarteIdeas MatterIdeas que CuentanIdeaçãoImpactoIndustrias CreativasLa Maleta AbiertaMoviliblogMás Allá de las FronterasNegocios SosteniblesPrimeros PasosPuntos sobre la iSeguridad CiudadanaSostenibilidadVolvamos a la fuente¿Y si hablamos de igualdad?Home
Citizen Security and Justice Creative Industries Development Effectiveness Early Childhood Development Education Energy Envirnment. Climate Change and Safeguards Fiscal policy and management Gender and Diversity Health Labor and pensions Open Knowledge Public management Science, Technology and Innovation  Trade and Regional Integration Urban Development and Housing Water and Sanitation
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to secondary menu
  • Skip to primary sidebar
  • Skip to footer

Sostenibilidad

Just another web-blogs Sites site

  • HOME
  • CATEGORIES
    • Agriculture and Food Security
    • Climate change
    • Ecosystems and Biodiversity
    • Environmental and Social Safeguards
    • Infrastructure and Sustainable Landscapes
    • Institutionality
    • Responsible Production and Consumption
  • Authors
  • English
    • Español

Measuring vulnerabilities to hazardous events

October 11, 2018 por Hori Tsuneki Leave a Comment


The increase in recent years of intensive hazardous events in Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC), such as the devastating Hurricanes in 2017 (Harvey, Irma, Maria, Nate, and others), the intensive earthquake in Ecuador in April 2016, the Argentina Floods in 2013 and many other events, have caused many fatalities, injuries, disruptions of infrastructure and people’s livelihood, as well as vast economic losses. These climate-related hazardous events clearly demonstrate how the ongoing global climate change can increase the number of people at risk across LAC countries and all over the world. All international institutions, national and local governments entities, communities and private sector organizations need to account for increasing disaster risk and incorporate this aspect in all development practices.

Increasing economic losses, higher numbers of affected people, and the disruption of infrastructure in many LAC countries due to the hazardous events, are also clear indicators that vulnerability to natural hazards has grown exponentially. Thus, vulnerability reduction should be a focus for successful sustainable development practices.

Reducing disaster risk needs accounting of the various vulnerabilities of the society at risk, including: economic, social, and physical conditions, considering also geographical and geological characteristics. The last few decades have shown that engineering approaches – mitigating extreme events through structural engineering measures (e.g., constructing river dikes for flood protection) – is not always sufficient for protecting lives and assets. Communities and the private sector are beginning to initiate comprehensive and participative vulnerability reduction practices, knowing the limit of how far we can withstand all hazardous events and learning to live with these risks.

Although “vulnerability reduction” is an easy phrase to conceptualize, it is very difficult to implement in a concrete and tangible manner. In fact, expressing the magnitude of past disasters is easy, via the statistics of the number of people affected and the amount of direct economic losses through international disaster databases. However, the most important questions are related to measuring the current or future vulnerability of a country or a city before a disaster occurs. How is your country’s or city’s vulnerability to an eventual hurricane that can take place once every 100-years? How do we monitor whether vulnerability reduction practices primarily done by the national or local civil protection agency or the community itself- have improved?

The Interamerican Development Bank (IDB) takes the initiative to lead international and local policy makers, academics, as well as national and local governments to discuss the state of the art of measuring vulnerability to natural hazards in two ways: an indicative and quantitative manner. 

 

Measuring vulnerability in an indicative manner

For over 15 years, the IDB has developed the family of indicators of disaster risk and risk management, that have been applied at the country level. These indicators are the following:

  • Index of Governance and Public Policies (iGOPP) that identifies conditions of public policy and regulatory framework related to disaster risk management.
  • Disaster Deficit Index (DDI) that measures country risk from a macro-economic and financial perspective when faced with eventual catastrophic events.
  • Local Disaster Index (LDI) that identifies the extent of spread and damage resulting from small-scale disasters in all parts of a country.
  • Prevalent Vulnerability Index (PVI) that measures three tangible social-related vulnerability aspects: hazard exposure and physical susceptibility, socioeconomic fragility, and resilience.
  • Risk Management Index (RMI) that measures institutional and community performance on disaster risk management.

For more information regarding these indicators visit the RiskMonitor

 

Measuring vulnerability in a quantitative manner

The IDB is developing a study to estimate probabilistic economic losses and human impacts due to eventual hazard events, including hurricanes, earthquakes, floods, droughts, volcanic eruptions and forest fires, expressing the vulnerability by probable maximum losses (PML), average annual losses (AAL) and Loss Exceedance Curve (LEC). The results from this study are summarized and published as Country Disaster Risk Profiles (CDRP). These CDRP have been developed for, Argentina, Bolivia, Chile, Peru, Jamaica, Guatemala and Venezuela, among other countries. Some of the studies incorporate future climate change and additional hazardous scenarios. Visit our publication website to learn more about these studies.

The development of these technical instruments helps to visualize disaster risk vulnerability in a way that will enable the decision makers to assess the potential impact of disasters and to promote the formulation of appropriate policies. These instruments show that, without a doubt, there is still a long way to go to improve the quality of technical outputs that will be more useful in the planning and implementation of socioeconomic development practices.

 

This blogpost is part of the IDB Group’s COP25 Campaign. COP25, under the Presidency of the Government of Chile, will take place from 2 – 13 December 2019 in Madrid, with logistical support from the Spanish government.

#BIDCOP25 #COP25


Filed Under: Infrastructure and Sustainable Landscapes

Hori Tsuneki

Tsuneki Hori is a Disaster Risk Management (DRM) Specialist in the Environment, Rural Development and Risk Management Division of the IDB. His work includes sector dialogue facilitation with national stakeholders, technical document preparation, loan and technical cooperation design, and portfolio management related to disaster risk management. He has published several books and international journals in the field of DRM, including his latest book “Local Disaster Risk Management in a Changing Climate: A Perspective from Central America” published by Emerald Publishing of the United Kingdom. He holds a PhD in International Environmental & Disaster Management from the Graduate School of Global Environmental Studies, Kyoto University, Japan.

Reader Interactions

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Primary Sidebar

Follow Us

Subscribe

SEARCH

Sustainability

This blog is a space to reflect about the challenges, opportunities and the progress made by Latin American and Caribbean countries on the path towards the region’s sustainable development.

SIMILAR POSTS

  • Natural? Disasters
  • Seven things you need to know about disasters in Latin America and the Caribbean
  • Five steps to include disaster risk management in infrastructure projects
  • What is the IDB doing to reduce disaster and climate risks in its operations?
  • What can be done to improve disaster preparedness and response in Haiti? Key Takeaways from a Mercredi de Réflexion

Footer

Banco Interamericano de Desarrollo
facebook
twitter
youtube
youtube
youtube

Blog posts written by Bank employees:

Copyright © Inter-American Development Bank ("IDB"). This work is licensed under a Creative Commons IGO 3.0 Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives. (CC-IGO 3.0 BY-NC-ND) license and may be reproduced with attribution to the IDB and for any non-commercial purpose. No derivative work is allowed. Any dispute related to the use of the works of the IDB that cannot be settled amicably shall be submitted to arbitration pursuant to the UNCITRAL rules. The use of the IDB's name for any purpose other than for attribution, and the use of IDB's logo shall be subject to a separate written license agreement between the IDB and the user and is not authorized as part of this CC- IGO license. Note that link provided above includes additional terms and conditions of the license.


For blogs written by external parties:

For questions concerning copyright for authors that are not IADB employees please complete the contact form for this blog.

The opinions expressed in this blog are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the IDB, its Board of Directors, or the countries they represent.

Attribution: in addition to giving attribution to the respective author and copyright owner, as appropriate, we would appreciate if you could include a link that remits back the IDB Blogs website.



Privacy Policy

Derechos de autor © 2023 · Magazine Pro en Genesis Framework · WordPress · Log in

Banco Interamericano de Desarrollo

Aviso Legal

Las opiniones expresadas en estos blogs son las de los autores y no necesariamente reflejan las opiniones del Banco Interamericano de Desarrollo, sus directivas, la Asamblea de Gobernadores o sus países miembros.

facebook
twitter
youtube
This site uses cookies to optimize functionality and give you the best possible experience. If you continue to navigate this website beyond this page, cookies will be placed on your browser.
To learn more about cookies, click here
x
Manage consent

Privacy Overview

This website uses cookies to improve your experience while you navigate through the website. Out of these, the cookies that are categorized as necessary are stored on your browser as they are essential for the working of basic functionalities of the website. We also use third-party cookies that help us analyze and understand how you use this website. These cookies will be stored in your browser only with your consent. You also have the option to opt-out of these cookies. But opting out of some of these cookies may affect your browsing experience.
Necessary
Always Enabled

Necessary cookies are absolutely essential for the website to function properly. This category only includes cookies that ensures basic functionalities and security features of the website. These cookies do not store any personal information.

Non-necessary

Any cookies that may not be particularly necessary for the website to function and is used specifically to collect user personal data via analytics, ads, other embedded contents are termed as non-necessary cookies. It is mandatory to procure user consent prior to running these cookies on your website.

SAVE & ACCEPT