Mapping Vulnerability to Disasters in Latin America and the Caribbean, 1900–2007

U.S. Geological Survey

The ability to accurately identify vulnerable populations and places in order to prepare for future hazards is of critical importance for disaster mitigation programs. The Centre for Research on the Epidemiology of Disasters (CRED) Emergency Events Database (EM-DAT) data contains records of events aggregated at the country level, which enables quick and accurate mapmaking of the number and types of disasters by country. While these maps are useful in a synthesis analysis of hazards, they reveal little about the distribution of disasters over the landscape. Because hazards and populations are not uniformly distributed across countries, mapping disasters at smaller regional levels more accurately displays vulnerable departments and population centers by disaster type and frequency.

This project focused on disasters in Latin America and the Caribbean from 1900 to 2007, mapping disaster data by first-level administrative boundaries with the objective of identifying geographic trends in regional occurrences of disasters and vulnerable populations.

Based on the extensive disaster database made available by the CRED at the Université Catholique de Louvain, Belgium, and funded by the U.S. Office of Foreign Disaster Assistance (OFDA), flood, drought, earthquake, volcano, landslide, tsunami and tidal wave, and windstorm disaster events were disaggregated from country listings into smaller administrative districts and mapped.

Courtesy of U.S. Geological Survey.

Map Book Page [PDF]