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Natural Hazards, UnNatural Disasters: The Economics of Effective Prevention
Box 3.2 Assessing risk in Central America Many Central American countries are on seismic fault lines and in the path of hurricanes. Determining their exposure and vulnerability is the first step in prevention and for insurance markets to develop. Much of the data and techniques to analyze risks are common to all of them; so sharing these data and what governments learn as they proceed would benefit all involved. The Central American Probabilistic Risk Assessment (CAPRA) is a set of evaluation techniques and a communication platform to help governments make decisions. It begins with a catalogue of past events and resulting losses along with an inventory of assets (such as population, housing, and infrastructure) that are exposed to various hazards. The frequency of hurricanes, earthquakes, volcanoes, floods, tsunamis, and landslides are in the database, and probabilistic risk assessment models permit calculating loss exceedance curves or risk maps by hazard, sector, and period. A National Risk Atlas can illustrate the various hazards and risks, and the risk can be communicated and managed. The platform’s architecture has been developed by regional experts to be open, free, and modular, so a user could adjust it to each country’s circumstances. It allows existing initiatives to be incorporated and avoids duplicating efforts. The Center for the Prevention of Natural Disasters in Central America led the efforts, supported by the United Nations’ International Strategy for Disaster Reduction and the World Bank (through the Global Facility for Disaster Reduction and Recovery). The first phase, begun in February 2008 with Costa Rica and Nicaragua, is being extended to other Central American countries. Source: World Bank staff.
through the Internet. Sometimes commercial interests take precedence over public good aspects. Some countries have begun the long but important process of mapping hazards, vulnerability, and modeling risk (box 3.2). Implement better building practices
Many die when buildings and infrastructure collapse during earthquakes, severe storms, and mudslides. Hazards reveal the weakness of buildings and other structures like bridges that, constructed differently, would have sustained less damage. A common emotional reaction is to blame private landlords, but many owner-occupied and government-owned buildings and structures also collapse. Corruption and builders are also blamed and public outrage and cries for the government to “do something” often result in such “stroke of the pen” measures as stronger building codes that are less effective than they sound. This section discusses the role of building codes, examining what it takes to have better buildings and structures, not easy even in developed countries, such as Italy (box 3.3). Building well is not necessarily more expensive, but it does require all involved to be well informed about the physical properties of materials. Once built, mistakes become an unfortunate legacy, and retrofitting is technically difficult and expensive. Cities with a large stock of poorly built structures, whether in Italy or Turkey, will remain vulnerable— even if new buildings are better constructed.