Flood risks and damages due to natural phenomena are becoming more frequent in Mexican coastal zones. Given this condition, the critical infrastructure of cities must be prepared and protected for such disasters, particularly in the health sector. To face this challenge, during the World Conference on Disasters Risk Reduction in 2005, the United Nations launched the global campaign 'Hospitals Safe from Disasters'. This campaign was based on the commitment that hospitals must be safe in order to mitigate disasters damages and hospitals must continue functioning after a disaster. Mexico together with other 168 countries became part of the compromise. In 2015, said goals and objectives were ratified in the Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction 2015-2030. Under the leadership of the National System for Civil Defense Mexico´s, the 'Safe Hospital Program' has been a mechanism to evaluate and certify the safety of hospitals located on disaster risk areas. Such a program broadly speaking comprises a Hospital Safety Index, an Evaluation Process, and the corresponding Evaluators Committee. Against this background, the main goal of this paper is to show the results of a long-term project that has been documenting the limits, challenges and strategies that some hospitals pose in Mexican coastal zones in order to reach the goals of the said Program. This analysis bases on semi-structured interviews with key informants in hospitals exposed to hydrometeorological hazards as hurricanes and heavy rains. Results show that in spite of a very precise developed Safety Index and detailed evaluation tools, hospitals lack in many cases of the financial resources and a 'risk reduction culture', or have serious technical constraints imposed by the age of the buildings. Nevertheless, they have developed strategies that could be useful for other health care facilities in the same situation.

September 19th 2015 marked the 30th anniversary of the Mexico City earthquake in which thousands of people died and hundreds of buildings collapsed. During this disaster, public space played an extremely important role not only in the emergency phase but also in the reconstruction phase; streets and squares were used not only as shelter but also as strategic points for the collection of food and organization for reconstruction works. By being in a seismic risk zone, it is of utmost importance to assess the location, characteristics, and current situation of public space in Mexico City, as public space will be a crucial resource in an emergency both during and after a disaster of this dimension. Therefore, the results of a preliminary assessment of public spaces in Mexico City are presented here to answer two main questions. What and which characteristics had the public spaces used during and after the 1985 earthquake and what is the present state of these public spaces? Results show that although seismic risk persists, public space has diminished in terms of quality and quantity toward two trends. First, some spaces have been privatized and have been replaced by shopping malls, and secondly, other spaces are saturated with new buildings in and around public spaces. From this, we can conclude that the role of public space in relation to disaster has been demerited over the years, which reduces the possibilities of recovery in the aftermath after an earthquake. Therefore, urban policies and impact studies for new projects should reconsider the role that public space may play in case of a disaster in one of the most populated cities in the world.

Mobile applications to manage disaster risks have been gaining more and more acceptance internationally. Mexico City has not been the exception and in the last five years its production and use by the government has increased. However, the main function of these applications has been merely informative and the role of inhabitants basically passive. This has been the case of communication and information technologies in the case of floods. Therefore, the objective of this work was to identify the potential and the conditions for the development and use of mobile applications to manage flood risk in Mexico City in a co-management context, as a result of a long-term research project. From two case studies, the most important functions in the voice of the population were identified from interviews and focus groups and later these functions were systematized and intended to be technified in a mobile application. The process allowed us to see the potential of digital co-management of flood risk supported by technology, and at the same time, to identify the different conditioning factors. On the one hand, among the most important potentials are the optimization of resources and the possible reduction of losses during floods. Similarly, it was observed that a co-production process with the population at risk increases the probability of acceptance of the technology. But on the other hand, various spatial, administrative, legislative and technical factors were identified that condition the use of this type of technology at the local level, such as the difficulties imposed by the territorial scale, and the administrative interlinks within the several dependencies responsible for both, risk management and for the production of mobile applications, for which recommendations are proposed.

ediTh monTesinos-PedRo 1 , noRBeRTo domínguez-RamíRez 1 & milTon monTejano-CasTillo 2 1 escuela superior de ingeniería y arquitectura unidad zacatenco, instituto Politécnico nacional, mexico 2 escuela superior de ingeniería y arquitectura unidad Tecamachalco, instituto Politécnico nacional, mexico aBsTRaCT The borough of Venustiano Carranza has an area of 33.42 km² (8,258 acres), which is 2.24% of the total area of mexico City. it is in the Trans-mexican Volcanic Belt, in a land of 3,341 ha (8255.79 acres) where there are mainly lake deposits. To the north of the borough, there stands a structure of 2,290 m.a.s.l. which pertains to what is referred to as Peñón de los Baños. since the CoVid-19 pandemic got to mexico in 2020, there was a general change throughout the country in the population behaviour regarding their daily life. however, an analysis should be made on how risk is understood in times of CoVid-19 in towns where risk-related problems normally occur. For the perception analysis, the town Peñón de los Baños was used a sample. in this town, floods are recurring during the rainy season, and it is one of the towns that was most affected by the pandemic during the first wave (april and may 2020), as more than 100 individuals died in just 2 months. The purpose of this analysis is to know how the population perceives the flood risk and behaves in an emergency phase, in the midst of a pandemic that entails sanitary and social restrictions, i.e., how is the population facing both problems: material losses and fear of getting infected. Both problems put people's lives at risk, but the results show the priorities and the response process in the emergency phase that is currently implemented by the population.

Talking about climate change is talking about a global concern, where international organizations set the guidelines for its treatment. However, each country has its own legislation and organization that create mechanisms outlined towards the adaptation, mitigation or monitoring of risks associated to climate change in vulnerable areas. For the case of hydrometeorological risks, it is necessary to identify which are the main government agencies associated with climate change in Mexico to observe what exists and how it works in order to identify instruments, policies and laws that affect the areas of action of adaptation, mitigation and monitoring of this type of risk. Therefore, based on a search methodology in digital information sources on government websites and documents, the topics related to climate change were classified into four categories: (1) Units responsible for the management, administration and execution of these topics; (2) Systems associated with such dependencies; (3) Laws and guidelines that regulate climate change in Mexico; and (4) Instruments that derive from such dependencies that support the main areas of action regarding adaptation, mitigation and monitoring of disaster risk. It was found that the analysis of the information is viable at three levels: national, state and municipal, where it is observed an inequitable production between levels of programs, instruments, strategies and funds. The government agencies have similarities between the objectives outlined for climate change. However, it is difficult to down-scale the information to the municipal level, where a higher promotion of adaptation and mitigation is observed more in terms of management rather than in operative actions. In addition, in the laws that govern these dependencies there are disconnections between the three levels so that efforts are duplicated, or objectives are not concluded, and most of the laws do not present clear references to international frameworks. The results could be useful to understand and formulate strategies and policy recommendations to reduce risks associated to climate change in Mexico.