The Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) together with ITEC S.A.S developed this project in order to carry out an evaluation of the catastrophic risk profile of Jamaica including earthquake, hurricane with climate change (wind), and flood (only in Kingston) risk. To achieve this objective a robust probabilistic methodology was implemented, which identifies the most important aspects of catastrophe risk for different disaster risk management applications. The methodology integrates exposure, hazard, and vulnerability models to obtain a prospective risk estimate, which attempts to anticipate possible events that might occur in the future according to historic information and the potential of new unrecorded events. The exposure model, on one hand, includes the geographical distribution of the most representative building typologies, their economic valuation and a human occupation model, at a national, regional and local level, for the purpose of estimating the economic and social impact of catastrophic events. The hazard model, on the other hand, integrates seismological, hydrometeorological, precipitation, and terrain elevation information, to characterize the intensity, location and frequency of occurrence of seismic, hurricane and flooding events. The previous models are inherently uncertain, requiring for a probabilistic formulation of the risk assessment process. The results of the analysis are particularly useful in guiding the priorities of the country's disaster risk management in general, as they account for the geographical distribution and quantification of the physical damage or losses for specific critical stochastic scenarios. With this information, it is possible to identify the concentration of risk at country level for particular sectors, and estimate the contingent liabilities of the government. Finally, specific risk mitigation plans can be developed consisting in the adoption of structural or non-structural mitigation measures, and a financial protection strategy can be designed, including risk retention (financing) or risk transfer instruments.
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