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Index for Risk Management for Latin America and the Caribbean: LAC-INFORM 2018 Update

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INFORM
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Contributing to more effective risk management of crises and disaster in Latin America and the Caribbean

INTRODUCTION

The 2018 version of the Index for Risk Management for Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC-INFORM) has been launched at the beginning of this year. LAC-INFORM 2018 is an update of LAC-INFORM 2017, the first version of this regional index.

LAC-INFORM is a tool to understand and measure the risk of humanitarian crises and disasters among the countries in the region. INFORM products can be used to support the prioritization and decision-making relating to crisis and disaster prevention, preparedness and response. Also, the tool could be used to monitor risk trends over time. This would allow to see in the medium and long term the effectiveness of actions that have been implemented to manage these risks.

LAC-INFORM is a regional adaptation of the global INFORM model. The global model has been adapted to better capture the particular conditions of the countries in the region and provide a better relative comparison of the risk levels among them. The LAC-INFORM model includes information about 33 countries in the region.

The main findings of the 2018 update show:

  • In general, there are no significant changes in the risk levels of the countries between 2017 and 2018.
    The same ten countries appear in the high and very high risk categories.

  • Countries with a very high risk of disasters and humanitarian crises are Guatemala, Haiti, and Honduras. Those with a high risk are: Bolivia, Colombia, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, El Salvador,
    Mexico, Nicaragua, Peru, and Venezuela (in alphabetical order).

  • In the case of the Caribbean, the reliability of the INFORM index remains low for most countries and is lower in the 2018 version compared to the 2017 version. The main reason is the lack of available information for several indicators in all three dimensions of the model.

The 2018 version does not yet account for the changes in the vulnerability and lack of coping capacity conditions caused by the events that affected the region in September 2017 and beyond.

The results of the LAC-INFORM index are a valuable input for any regional analysis that supports risk informed decision making, in order to reduce disaster and humanitarian crisis risk, build peoples’ resilience, and prepare better for when crises do happen. Therefore, it is important to continue actions that strengthen regional and national capacities to manage information on different aspects of risk and, on the other hand, to use these information in decision-making processes.