Preview of the Project Highlight
Despite Colombia’s well-earned reputation for risk reduction and disaster management since the formulation of the National Plan for Prevention and Relief in 1989, most communities are not well prepared for the next natural event (earthquake, volcano, and flood). For reasons such as low technical capacity or lack of access to information, Colombian municipalities have had difficulty analyzing risk and implementing disaster risk management plans. Moreover, regardless of investments in monitoring of seismic, volcanic, and hydrometeorological (processes related to rainfall) events, risk assessment of these and other phenomena remain weak. As Julián Escallón, Civil Engineer in the National Unit for Disaster Risk Management, has said, these difficulties reflect a lack of capacity to apply new methodologies and technologies and the need for more and improved information. The new methodologies, according to Escallón, “are best used with in-depth information of very high quality.”
In the area around Galeras Volcano in Southwestern Colombia, residents and authorities are strengthening their capacity to analyze risk and prepare for the next natural event and avoid natural disasters using the CAPRA Probabilistic Risk Assessment Initiative. The CAPRA software suite is a free, modular, open source, and multi-hazard tool for risk assessment. CAPRA provides a risk calculation platform (CAPRAGIS) integrating exposure databases and physical vulnerability functions under a probabilistic approach. The CAPRA platform evaluates risk in terms of physical damage (buildings and infrastructure) and estimates economic and human life losses. CAPRA uses a display platform geographical information system (GIS) to estimate the disaster risk of earthquakes, tsunamis, floods, hurricanes and volcanoes.
The CAPRA Initiative was originally developed to assist Central American governments in the assessment of threats from natural events (earthquakes, floods, and volcanoes) and the adoption of standards to reduce the risk of natural disaster. The Initiative is currently under implementation a a part of Technical Assistance Projects (TAPs) in Central America, South America, and South Asia.
