Management of natural hazard risk in Cartago, Costa Rica

Cities are particularly vulnerable to natural disasters due to the concentration of population, buildings and infrastructure. With urbanisation on the rise, particularly in developing countries, the incorporation of disaster management is high on urban agendas as the losses from a single event can destroy decades of development. The main challenge at the moment is to move forward from general policy manifestos to effective networking and case-specific urban disaster mitigation plans. This paper presents the main findings of a research project that aimed at first identifying gaps in current urban planning framework and practices as well developing geographically referenced information products to aid the process of selection of adequate disaster mitigation strategies. The Costa Rican city of Cartago was used as case study since it constitutes a good example of a municipality in a developing country with serious natural hazard threats and where urban plans have been drawn up with deficient or even absent information on potential natural hazards’ losses.