Unveiling the latent disasters from a holistic and probabilistic view: development of a national risk atlas

Abstract

The objective of the holistic risk assessment is to evaluate risk from a comprehensive perspective, integrating physical risk, or potential physical damage, linked to the happening of hazard events and socio-economic and environmental factors, non-hazard-dependent. This approach seeks to capture how these latter have an incidence on physical risk, exacerbating the negative impacts of a dangerous event, as well as affecting the capacity of the society to anticipate or resist or to respond and recover from adverse impacts. This article presents the results of the holistic evaluation obtained at the subnational level in Colombia in the framework of the Risk Atlas of Colombia of the National Unit for Disaster Risk Management (UNGRD, its Spanish acronym). The evaluation was performed using the probabilistic physical risk results derived from a multi-hazard risk assessment, with 16 socio-economic indicators available for the 1123 municipalities of Colombia. These results are relevant for comparison purposes and are also useful to identify the risk drivers associated not only with the current risk conditions but also those shaping future risk.