Guidelines for children:

1. With the help of your teacher, look up the meaning of the following words: Disaster, Hazard, and Vulnerability. Definitions are on the following page.
2. Find out from books, archives and ask around in your community what major disasters have happened in your area in the past. Identify hazards (like floods, earthquakes, storms, landslides, volcanic eruptions or others) that could affect your city or village.
3. Discuss disasters in your community with the mayor, firemen, the police, emergency personnel, doctors, social workers, and journalists.
4. Draw the most important buildings; schools, hospitals, fire services, houses, police stations as well as potentially dangerous buildings such as factories, fragile buildings, dams, power plants. Use a different symbol for each building. Map out roads, rivers, power lines, sewarage works and dumps. Use different colors to show these areas.
5. For each hazard, identify how buildings would be affected (a little, badly, completely destroyed) and use a different symbol for each degree of damage.
6. Identify where the people are who will need most help in case of a disaster (Nursing homes, hospitals, nursery schools for example).
7. Discuss possible solutions to diminish the risk.
8. Present your findings to your teacher and send us your map so that you can enter the contest and we can show your map everywhere in the world.

What Is a Community Risk Map?

A risk map is a map of a community or geographical zone that identifies the places and the buildings—homes, schools, health facilities and others—that might be adversely affected in the event of hurricanes, earthquakes, tsunamis, floods, volcanic eruptions, landslides, and other natural hazards and related technological or environmental disasters.

Risk mapping is a group effort. Many people with various kinds of expertise—emergency management, geology, meteorology, history, or simply a good knowledge of the locality— participate in the effort by providing their own input about which places in the community are vulnerable to hazardous events.

Who Can Participate?

• Community organizations.
• Municipalities.
• Local healthcare workers.
• Local Emergency Committees.
• Religious groups.
• Non-governmental organizations.
• Any other groups wishing to participate and organize themselves to do so.

What Should the Risk Map Include?

It should be a map of the community or area at risk indicating the most significant facilities, such as schools, hospitals, churches, the Red Cross, fire-fighters or police headquarters, the City Hall or other municipal buildings.

The Risk Map should also include especially hazardous buildings in the area, such as factories or other work places. The different types of buildings should be identified by a distinctive symbol. The map may also include the main streets, roads, and bridges; significant electricity and water supply lines; areas exposed to flooding or landslides due to excessive deforestation or any other reason; and densely populated areas that are vulnerable to natural disasters. Different colors may be used to indicate the degree of risk: severe, moderate or light.

How Should the Risk Map Be Produced?

• Organize a series of walks or drives around the community or the area under consideration to identify areas or features at risk.
• Hold meetings to discuss the findings of this reconnaissance effort and the reasons why some areas are considered at risk.
• Discuss possible solutions to reduce risk.
• Collaborate in the drawing of the map.

What Will the Prizes Be?

The winners of the contests will receive grants towards disaster reduction projects in their schools and local communities.

In addition, the winning maps—and any others considered noteworthy—will be published in a commemorative volume and will be exhibited.

All maps submitted will become the property of the ISDR Secretariat and will not be returned to the contestants. Participants are encouraged to keep copies of their maps and distribute them as widely as possible in their community.

Please send your Risk Maps
by 21 september 2001
“Risk Mapping Contest”
(Nicole Appel)
ISDR Secretariat
Palais des Nations CH 1211
Geneva 10 • Switzerland.

What is a natural hazard?

Natural hazards comprise phenomena such as earthquakes; volcanic activity; land-slides; tsunamis, tropical cyclones and other severe storms; tornadoes and high winds; river floods and coastal flooding; wildfires and associated haze; drought; sand/dust storms; infestations.

What is a natural disaster?

A natural disaster is the result of the impact of a natural hazard on a socio-economic system with a given level of vulnerability, which prevents the affected society from coping adequately with this impact. Natural hazards themselves do not necessarily lead to disasters. It is only their interaction with people and their environment that generates impacts, which may reach disastrous proportions. The ISDR encompasses technical and environmental disasters only when caused by natural hazards.

What is vulnerability to disasters?

Vulnerability to disasters is a status resulting from human action or from an inherent situation such as poverty. It describes the degree to which a society is threatened by the impact of natural hazards. The degree of vulnerabiliy depends on the condition of human settlements and their infrastructure, the way in which public policy and administration are engaged in disaster management, the level of information and education available about hazards and how to deal with them.

Why target society’s vulnerability to disasters?

Although societies have always experienced major natural disasters, they have, in recent years, been increasingly affected by their adverse impact. In early 2001 alone, two severe consecutive earthquakes in El Salvador and one in India, together with recurring floods in Mozambique caused significant loss of life and damage to economic and social infrastructures in these countries. This global development is directly linked to a number of trends such as increasing poverty, population growth and density particularly in the context of rapid urbanization, environmental degradation and climate change.

What is Disaster Reduction?

Solutions to counter the increasing impact of natural hazards world-wide exist. The knowledge and technology necessary to apply these solutions are widely available. Disaster reduction is the sum of all the measures, which can be undertaken to reduce the vulnerability of a socio-economic system to natural hazards. The measures cover a wide spectrum of activities ranging from avoiding disasters all together to measures aimed at limiting the severity of a disaster when it strikes. Sound information and political commitment are the basis of successful disaster reduction measures. This is an ongoing process which is not limited to a single disaster. It seeks to motivate societies at risk to become engaged in conscious disaster management, beyond the traditional response to disasters. Disaster reduction is multi-sectoral and interdisciplinary in nature and involves a wide variety of interrelated activities at the local, national, regional and international level.

The International Strategy for Disaster Reduction

The UN has established the International Strategy for Disaster Reduction as a global framework for action with a view to enabling all societies to become resilient to the effects of natural hazards and related technological and environmental disasters, in order to reduce human, economic and social losses. It involves a conceptual shift from an emphasis on disaster response to the management of risk through the integration of disaster reduction into sustainable development. The implementation of the Strategy is premised on the establishment of partnerships between governments, non-governmental organizations, UN agencies, the scientific community, the media as well as other relevant stakeholders in the disaster reduction community. The four goals of the Strategy are to increase public awareness about disaster reduction, to obtain commitment from public authorities, to stimulate inter-disciplinary and inter-sectoral partnerships, and to improve the scientific knowledge of the causes of natural disasters and the consequences of the impact of natural hazards. The UN General Assembly has mandated two additional tasks which are directly relevant to disaster reduction; the continuance of international cooperation to reduce the impacts of El Niño and La Niña and the strengthening of disaster reduction capacity through Early Warning measures.