Risk Management at the Latin American Observatory

Muñoz, Ángel G.; Ruíz, Daniel; Ramírez, Pedro José Rueda; León, Gloria; Quintana, Juan; Bonilla, Alejandra; Torres, William Camilo Sánchez; Pastén, Max; Sánchez, Ortiz

doi:10.5772/50788

Cited by 12 publications

(21 citation statements)

References 13 publications

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“…Those indixes have significant correlations among them, but different social indixes are related with different social aspects and dimensions (Muñoz et al, 2012). The strongest correlation found was total population size since the higher the population size, the higher population exposition to the different hazards.…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 84%

“…Present and future socioeconomic vulnerabilities as defined in Wilches-Chaux (1993); Cardona et al (2012); Koks, Jongman, Husby y Botzen (2015); Mechler and Bouwer (2014); Jongman et al (2015); are factors that can exacerbate the impacts of climate variability and change (Hidalgo and Alfaro, 2012;Muñoz et al, 2012). Ferreira, Hamilton, and Vincent (2011) present several examples of countries or regions around the world where present and future vulnerabilities have exacerbated the impacts of climate variability.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…They state that municipalities with the greatest populations of each country, like the ones containing the capital cities: Ciudad de Guatemala (Guatemala), Distrito Central (Honduras), San Salvador (El Salvador), Managua (Nicaragua), San Jose (Costa Rica), Ciudad de Panama (Panama) have high correlation with impact occurrences. They showed also that in this type of analysis, needs to consider socioeconomic variables like poverty, health and Human Development Index, in order to infer robust conclusions about impact causes (Muñoz et al, 2012;Neri and Magaña, 2016).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Ferreira, Hamilton, and Vincent (2011) present several examples of countries or regions around the world where present and future vulnerabilities have exacerbated the impacts of climate variability. Central America is an economically challenged region that is also affected by a large hydrological variability (Muñoz et al, 2012), which results from the influence of several large-scale climatic processes and features (Alfaro and Pérez-Briceño, 2014). Those climatic processes include the subtropical high of the North Atlantic (Hidalgo, Alfaro, and Quesada-Montano, 2017;Taylor and Alfaro, 2005), which is associated with the strength of the easterly trade winds.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Identifying the climatic processes that produce more impacts and finding which local governments are more impacted by them, help to plan and allocate human and economic resources to prevent disasters, identifying the impacts spatial distribution associated with the hydrometeorological hazards, and link them with different climatic processes (Muñoz et al, 2012). For example, when the NOAA National Hurricane Center provide the trajectory forecast for a cyclone in the Caribbean basin, the Honduras institution that deals with emergency attention can identify if this system can affect Honduras and which are the expected local governments that can be impacted.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Mapping Environmental and Socioeconomic impacts of hydrometeorological hazards across Central America. Study case: Honduras

Alfaro

Hidalgo

Briceño

2018

PEDS

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Hydrometeorological hazards have historically affected Central America and significantly impacted the isthmus. However, the spatial distribution of those impacts is heterogeneous and depends on several factors, such as storm trajectories and community vulnerability. To address the spatial distribution of impacts related with historical events, Honduras was used as a case study. This paper was aimed at identifying the municipalities most impacted by the hydrometeorological events and at studying their correlation with socioeconomic variables. Impacts recorded from 1919 to 2012 were collected from the DesInventar and EM-DAT databases. Data was georeferenced using a Geographical Information System and the information was disaggregated at local government scale. Spearman spatial correlation were calculated between physical variables and socioeconomic indices. The municipalities that reported more impacts included La Ceiba, Choluteca, Francisco Morazán and Yoro. Three hazards were found and the most important regarding impacts: cold fronts or outbreaks, tropical cyclones and easterly waves. The first type was more common during boreal winter, while the last two hazards were normally found during boreal spring-summer-autumn. Population and poverty were the social variables with the highest correlation with impacts. The analysis showed that spatial distribution of impacts related with hydrometeorological causes cannot be explained solely by climate causes. Therefore, other variables, such as socioeconomic should also be considered in analyses of these types of impact.Keywords: Climate, impacts, hydrometeorology, Honduras, Central America. ResumenLas amenazas hidrometeorológicas han afectado históricamente América Central y generado muchos impactos en el istmo. Sin embargo, la distribución especial de estos impactos es heterogénea y depende de varios factores, tales como la trayectoria de las tormentas y la vulnerabilidad de la comunidad. Para analizar la distribución de los impactos relacionados con eventos históricos, se usó Honduras como un estudio de caso. El objetivo de este estudio fue identificar las municipalidades más impactadas por eventos hidrometeorológicos y estudiar sus correlaciones con variables socioeconómicas. Se recolectaron los impactos del periodo 1919-2012 de las bases de datos DesInventar y EMDAT. Los datos fueron georeferenciados usando un Sistema de Información Geográfica y la información fue desagregada a una escala de gobierno local. Se calcularon las correlaciones espaciales de Spearman entre las variables físicas y los índices socioeconómicos. Las municipalidades que reportaron mayores impactos incluyen a La Ceiba, Choluteca, Francisco Morazán y Yoró. Se encontró que tres amenazas fueron las más importantes en asociación con los impactos: frentes o empujes fríos, ciclones tropicales y ondas del este o tropicales. La ocurrencia de los primeros fue más común durante el invierno boreal, mientras que la de los otros dos fue normalmente durante la primavera, verano y otoño boreal. La po...

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Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 84%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 3 more Smart Citations

Mapping Environmental and Socioeconomic impacts of hydrometeorological hazards across Central America. Study case: Honduras

Alfaro

Hidalgo

Briceño

2018

PEDS

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Improved seasonal prediction skill of rainfall for the Primera season in Central America

Alfaro

Chourio

Muñoz

et al. 2017

Intl Journal of Climatology

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This study explores the predictive skill of seasonal rainfall characteristics for the first rainy (and planting) season, May–June, in Central America. Statistical predictive models were built using a Model Output Statistics (MOS) technique based on canonical correlation analysis, in which variables that forecast with the Climate Forecast System version 2 (CFSv2) were used as candidate predictors for the observed total precipitation, frequency of rainy days and mean number of extremely dry and wet events in the season. CFSv2 initializations from February to April were explored. The CFSv2 variables used in the study consist of rainfall, as in a typical MOS technique, and a combination of low‐level winds and convective available potential energy (CAPE), a blend that has been previously shown to be a good predictor for convective activity. The highest predictive skill was found for the seasonal frequency of rainy days, followed by the mean frequency of dry events. In terms of candidate predictors, the zonal transport of CAPE (uCAPE) at 925 hPa offers higher skill across Central America than rainfall, which is attributed in part to the high model uncertainties associated with precipitation in the region. As expected, dynamical model predictors initialized in February provide lower skill than those initialized later. Nonetheless, the skill is comparable for March and April initializations. These results suggest that the National Meteorological and Hydrological Services in Central America, and the Central American Regional Climate Outlook Forum, can produce earlier more skilful forecasts for May–June rainfall characteristics than previously stated.

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Climate services for society: origins, institutional arrangements, and design elements for an evaluation framework

Vaughan

Dessai

2014

WIREs Climate Change

374

248

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Climate services involve the generation, provision, and contextualization of information and knowledge derived from climate research for decision making at all levels of society. These services are mainly targeted at informing adaptation to climate variability and change, widely recognized as an important challenge for sustainable development. This paper reviews the development of climate services, beginning with a historical overview, a short summary of improvements in climate information, and a description of the recent surge of interest in climate service development including, for example, the Global Framework for Climate Services, implemented by the World Meteorological Organization in October 2012. It also reviews institutional arrangements of selected emerging climate services across local, national, regional, and international scales. By synthesizing existing literature, the paper proposes four design elements of a climate services evaluation framework. These design elements include: problem identification and the decision-making context; the characteristics, tailoring, and dissemination of the climate information; the governance and structure of the service, including the process by which it is developed; and the socioeconomic value of the service. The design elements are intended to serve as a guide to organize future work regarding the evaluation of when and whether climate services are more or less successful. The paper concludes by identifying future research questions regarding the institutional arrangements that support climate services and nascent efforts to evaluate them.

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Risk Management at the Latin American Observatory

Cited by 12 publications

References 13 publications

Mapping Environmental and Socioeconomic impacts of hydrometeorological hazards across Central America. Study case: Honduras

Mapping Environmental and Socioeconomic impacts of hydrometeorological hazards across Central America. Study case: Honduras

Improved seasonal prediction skill of rainfall for the Primera season in Central America

Climate services for society: origins, institutional arrangements, and design elements for an evaluation framework

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