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DesInventar DataBases

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Guatemala Institution : CONRED Coordinadora Nacional para la Reducción de Desastres Naturales Contact : Carlos René Mecal Covering : Nacional Period : since 1990 until 2019 Status : Activo    Update to: 2000-12-31    Datacards Num: 1491 Download: Database in DesInventar format Description : The history of DesInventar's implemetation in the National Coordination for natural risk reduction - CONRED , started in 1997 with a training workshop prepared by LA RED in the city of Panama and more speciphically after a follow-up visit by a DesInventar expert from the SINAPROC. Since then people in charge have been trying to keep the Desinventar's Guatemala database updated with the information from CONRED. This information is useful to inform the news media about similar events that happened before. DesInventar was used for two specific applications: the first for the entering of un-real events in a simulation exercise of which record cards , graphics and maps were presented to the President of the Republic (Guatemala) in the Allied Humanitarian Forces Excercise FAHUM-97 which took place in the city of Guatemala in 1997; the second as support after Mitch hurrycane pased by Central America, to present the most affected zones of Guatemala to the ministers conforming the Government Cabinet o as to the national and international News media. Paralel and complementary to this there are being mantained a SIG to dispose of Risk maps and a personalized damage scheme to present the zones of Guatemala that were mostly affected, to the ministries that conform the Government Cabinet so as to the national and international News media. There has not been comunication with them since the Paracas (2000) workshop. Guatemala didn't want to participate in the CEPREDENAC- LARED agreement, thanks to which 4 centralamerican countries got training. Institution : FLACSO Facultad Latinoamericana de Ciencias Sociales - Sede Académica Guatemala Contact : Gisella Gellert Covering : Nacional Period : since 1998 until 2000 Status : Activo    Update to: 2000-12-31    Datacards Num: 2418 Download: Database in DesInventar format Description : The Guatemala database has been fed with diverse sources of newspaper archives information, among which they are La Prensa Libre newspaper, that covers up more than 805 reports and also the newpapers Siglo XXI, La Hora and El Periódico. DesInventar's data do not represent a complete statistic of the occurred disasters in Guatemala but a sample determined by the information sources used. However this empirical accumulation of data (2418 reports) during a relatively extended period (1988 - 2000) let the FLACSO team identify general risk patterns existing in the country , so as the degree of heterogeneity and complexity. Also, it was possible to include events that are not normally recorded by the institution in charge of the attention of disasters either because they were small (did not constitute a declared and assisted emergency) or because it was a kind of disaster not covered by the institution (fires, epidemies, etc.). A national evaluation of the data makes possible mostly in these two ways a sensibilization to understand that: -Guatemala is exposed to a great risk range (25 types) and the dominant ones are those in which formation the social component is highly present or even exclusively present (fires, floods, slidings, epydemies, forest fires ). -The great number of disasters recorded corresponds mostly to small and local events. The events that can be considered as middle and with regional impacts constitute the exception and only the Mitch hurrycane ( that isn't included yet in the database) can be denominated as a national impact disaster (although its impacts were limited to some regions of Guatemala and resulted in hundreds of scattered local disasters). Reading these global data, when focused in this objective, can be very useful to achieve a mayor conscience of new schemes of risk management and their respective policies formulation.