March 1, 2013

What happened this week?

Chile. Three years have passed since Chile's catastrophic earthquake.
After three years since the 2010 earthquake in Chile, an 8.8-magnitude quake and the sixth largest seismological event in recorded history, the government of Chile reports that 93% of all housing re-construction is now complete or underway. This date is commemorated with President Sebastián Piñera unveiling of a new housing complex in Constitucion.
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Perú. Piñas was left without electricity, water, while a hospital was evacuated and houses collapsed from intense rains.
Three hours of heavy rains caused a flood and subsequent disasters in Piñas. Water, mud and stones lined the streets and indoor spaces on Tuesday night. Residents claimed never to have experienced anything like it, in a community of 16,000 people that experienced 20 mudslides. 90% of the population in the area were left without drinking water due to the damages experienced by the collection and distribution system.
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Interesting Facts

What would you map?
The OAS attended the 2013 ESRI Federal GIS Conference in Washington DC and here we pose the aforementioned question to you. GIS  or Geographic Information Systems is the integration of hardware and software to produce and utilize data to better understand the world around us. Everything in our world can represent data and everything can be mapped, the question is how will you do it?
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What is New in Disaster Risk Reduction?

Colombia. Building resilience to climate change in the transport infrastructure of Colombia
According to a report from 2011 of the World Economic Forum, Colombia has a significant lag in the transport infrastructure in all its forms. According to the Center for Strategic and International Studies, in terms of quality of roads the country ranks 126 among 144 nations. To address this dilemma, the Ministry of Transportation and its agencies are pioneering a project aimed at increasing the country's resilience to climate change, by incorporating policies regarding adaptation to climate change into the transportation infrastructure sector in Colombia.
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U.S.A. Utilities Should Focus on Climate Change Risk Mitigation

At the 2013 Climate Leadership Conference in DC, Rod West, Executive Vice President at Entergy Corporation urged to stop focusing on converting people to climate change believers and start focusing on the cost of doing nothing. Mr West addressed the attendees by stating that “... as a business people you need to pay attention to the risk. How do you go about assessing the cost of doing nothing?”
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Caribbean. Data managers/developers to use spatial data for disaster risk management

More than 40 Caribbean data managers, IT specialists and software developers concluded this weekend at the St. Augustine campus of the University of West Indies a one week long gathering where they learned how to manage, share, and increase the use of spatial data to reduce disaster risk in the Caribbean. 
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Centro America, Mexico and Panama training together to face the threat of Tsunamis in the Pacific.

The Pacific Tsunami Warning Center (PTWC) provided a workshop for specialists in the areas of seismology, tsunamis, emergency response as they relate to early warning systems, for countries with pacific coast lines. The workshop included topics of seismic and oceanic monitoring, as well as emergency response and evacuation signals, routes and shelters.
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