Planificación urbana: herramienta para la prevención y atención de desastres. (Translated title: Urban planning: tool for disaster prevention and attention).

Usualmente hablamos del papel que juega la planificación urbana en la prevención de desastres, pero este trabajo pretende destac ar la importancia de la planificación urbana en la respuesta coordinada a eventos, incidentes, emergencias y desastres, donde una organización previa de carácter sostenible a nivel de ciudad, en cuanto a identificación de vulnerabilidad, establecimiento de rutas y puntos de evacuación debidamente acondicionados y con una serie de equipamientos referentes a Centros de Prevención y Atención de Desastres, estaciones de bomberos, centros de reservas, etc. pueden hacer la diferencia entre un hábitat inseguro y una ciudad competitiva

Learning about post-disaster phases via ludic activities: a case study of Santiago, Chile

On February 27, 2010, a magnitude 8.8 Mw earthquake struck Chile and provoked a tsunami that wreaked havoc on the Chilean coast. A total of 830 failures in the transportation system were registered on roads, with 91 concession bridges and 221 public bridges suffered damage or collapsed. This study aims to test a methodology for teaching people about the characteristics of each post-disaster phase concerning road infrastructure and business continuity. The methodology is based on ludic activities designed as a non-structural mitigation action to reduce cascading risk and enhance business continuity. Activities include answering questions related to experiences with earthquakes, completing puzzles as a metaphor of a city during the reconstruction process and associating scale models of vehicles and machinery with a specific post-disaster phase. The methodology was tested with Chilean high school students aged 11 to 15. Answers from the participants indicate that girls were more aware of protection techniques during earthquakes than boys. In contrast, boys were more mindful of terminology and engaged in decision-making activities. The similarity between completing a puzzle and a city in reconstruction after an earthquake was easy for participants to understand. Initially, participants only identified relief as a post-disaster phase but did not recognise the other post-disaster phases of early recovery, recovery and development. After the workshop, they managed to identify vehicles related to the relief phase, some vehicles and machinery related to the early recovery and recovery phases, and others that can be used in more than one or two post-disaster phases

Fuzzy boundaries between post-disaster phases: the case of L’Aquila, Italy

A number of indices have been developed for measuring vulnerability to natural phenomena, but little attention has been paid to recovery indices particularly with respect to earthquakes. Post-disaster periods are usually divided into four phases based on specific time. The name established by the UNDP ("relief", "early recovery", "recovery" and "development") have been used in this working paper. This research examines the hypothesis that the time between post-disaster recovery phases is fuzzy and should be defined by the progress achieved in the recovery process, rather than by the amount of time elapsed since the event. The methodology employed involved four steps: (1) fieldwork, (2) mapping, (3) the selection of indicators, and (4) assessment. The case study area was L’Aquila in Italy, which was struck by an earthquake in 2009. Each phase of the recovery process at L'Aquila was assigned a score according to the progress observed at April 2014, with the highest score going to the early recovery phase (6 points), followed by the recovery (4 points), the development (2 points), and the relief phase (1 point). The results have demonstrated the possibility of determining post-disaster recovery phases in an affected area according to its achievements measured through indicators rather than in terms of time

Renovando el habitat en riesgo. (Translated title: Renewing the habitat at risk)

La calidad del hábitat es el conjunto de propiedades evaluables del mismo que permiten juzgar las condiciones en que las personas vivimos; cuando habitamos en zonas de amenaza por terremoto, inundación o deslizamiento, esta calidad se disminuye al no contar con un sitio seguro en el cual emplazar nuestra vivienda. Consciente de esta situación, la Alcaldía Mayor de Bogotá ha formulado dentro de su Plan de Ordenamiento Territorial una serie de medidas y ha facultado a un conjunto de entidades como responsables de desalojar, reubicar y facilitar el acceso de las familias a una vivienda en condiciones seguras mejorando su calidad de vida y transformando el paisaje urbano que compone la ciudad con el objetivo añadido de que éste sea más sostenible y competitivo

Volcán galeras hábitat en riesgo

En las poblaciones ubicadas en el área deinfluencia del volcán Galeras, la relación delhombre con el medio natural se ha alteradoy por tanto es necesario cambiar a través delas significaciones y prácticas de la mismapoblación, la postura pasiva que ha asumidofrente a este hábitat en riesgo.El Gobierno tiene en sus manos los procesos deatención de la emergencia y el reasentamientodefinitivo. Para cumplir con esta misión, se debeadelantar una negociación con la poblaciónque implique continuar con la asignaciónde subsidios, mejorar las condiciones de losalbergues temporales, y aún más importante,convencer a la población de reasentarseen un sitio más seguro y dedicarse a nuevasactividades, entre ellas la promoción delecoturismo

Disaster management and resilience in electric power systems: the case of Chile

Chile is one of the countries located at the Ring of Fire. This belt concentrates subduction zones such as between the Nazca and South America Tectonic Plate, which is the reason for the intense seismic and volcanic activity in Chile. The strongest earthquake in the last years (Mw 8.8), took place the 27th February 2010. The earthquake triggered a tsunami which devastated several coastal towns in south-central Chile. The official death toll was 521, while the number of missing was 56. The Government declared 6 regions as zone of Catastrophes: Valparaiso, Metropolitana,Maule, BioBio, and Araucania. It is estimated that the earthquake generated a power outage that affected the 93% of the country; therefore, the electricity and communications were initially interrupted, but later mostly restored. However, it took some days in the case of some locations. Electricity infrastructure is key for the function of critical services (health, traffic control, water supply), which are necessary for undertaking the emergency response tasks after an earthquake and/or a tsunami. In normal times, the electricity infrastructure is necessary to sustain human and economic wellbeing since it supplies energy to industrial, commercial financial sectors, communication networks, and hence almost all activities in modern societies. There are four electricity supply systems in Chile: the Central Interconnected System, the Norte Grande Interconnected System, the Aysén and Magallanes. Nevertheless, the biggest system regarding installed capacity (75%) and population served (93%) is the Central Interconnected System, therefore the most important. In this project we want to support the implementation of community resilience due to power outages caused by earthquakes and tsunamis. To achieve this aim we plan to collect and analyze qualitative data to identify the needs of the affected population due to the power outage and its coping strategies

Measuring the progress of a recovery process after an earthquake:the case of L’Aquila-Italy

After the earthquake in 2009, L’Aquila (Italy) started a torturous recovery process, characterized by a delay in the reconstruction of the city center, the political and legal intrigues, and the dissatisfaction of the population with the decisions made and actions taken by the government. Between 2010 and 2014 we formulated a recovery index based on spatial indicators, such as building condition and building use, to measure the progress of the recovery process in L’Aquila. Now, seven years after the earthquake, we are not only interested in measuring the progress of the recovery in L’Aquila, but also in validating the usefulness of the proposed recovery index. To achieve this objective, we are going to consider the same set of spatial indicators and expert criteria that we considered to determine the progress of the recovery in L’Aquila by 2010, 2012, and 2014. Over these years, the city center of L’Aquila was selected as the sampling area, to establish the progress of the recovery in the whole city. In 2016 we found that the number of reconstructed buildings and buildings under ongoing construction has significantly increased, followed by the number of inhabited buildings. The number of buildings classified as partially enabled, propped, reconstruction projected, and damaged had greatly decreased by 2016, while the number of demolished buildings and buildings with restricted use slightly increased. The number of buildings with residential and commercial use increased along the main roads by 2016. Paradoxically, while progress was observed in the overall building condition, there was no significant progress in the building use. This poses several questions about the dynamics of the returning process of the former habitants of the city center in L’Aquila. We can conclude that the proposed recovery index is useful for identifying the spatial pattern of the recovery process in an urban area affected by an earthquake. At the same time, this recovery index allows us to quantify the recovery progress based on indicators