Mapping Hazardous Frontiers.

• Author: Stichter, Steven
• Position: Caribbean Disaster Mitigation Project - Brief Article

IN THE AFTERMATH of a disaster, national and international efforts to house those whose homes were destroyed and to rebuild damaged infrastructure and economies are well publicized. Much more difficult to find, however, is media coverage of efforts ongoing througout the Hemisphere to reduce the potential for a disaster before it occurs. One such example is the Caribbean Disaster Mitigation Project (CDMP), a joint effort of the Office of Foreign Disaster Assistance of the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID/OFDA) and the OAS Unit for Sustainable Development and Environment (USDE).

The CDMP, which ran from 1993 to 1999, supported pilot projects across a broad range of sectors--housing, insurance, development planning, community preparedness, and lifeline infrastructure--throughout the island Caribbean, with the aim of developing successful approaches to mitigate the effects of natural hazards in the region.

Understanding and mapping hazards is a complex undertaking, which is made even more complex in areas, such as the Caribbean, which are subject to many different types of hazards. In Jamaica, the CDMP supported a multi-hazard assessment of the effects of hurricanes, landslides, and earthquakes on the Kingston metropolitan area. In the assessment of...