Guidebook for assessing risk exposure to natural hazards in Central America

This guidebook reports on a the achievement of practical approaches for risk assessment, tailored to the Central American context and need. Focusing on geological risks resulting from volcanic eruptions, landslides, earthquakes and inundations, the project 'Mitigation of georisks in Central America' was elaborated to test comprehensible georisk analysis procedures, exclusively based on officially available baseline, hazard and vulnerability data.

The guidebook reflects a main outcome of a common project of technical cooperation, finalized in June 2010 between the Federal Institute for Geosciences and Natural Resources (BGR/Hannover, Germany) and their partners in El Salvador (SNET), Guatemala (INSIVUMEH), Honduras (COPECO) and Nicaragua (INETER). The project was funded by the German Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ). It was aiming at designing and implementing a supra-regional 'Georisk-Information System' (GRIS) for the collection, management and evaluation of relevant baseline, hazard and vulnerability information for assessing and mapping risk and to enable public services making results available for everyone.