Indicators to measure risk of disaster associated with drought: Implications for the health sector

Abstract

IntroductionBrazil has a large semiarid region, which covers part of 9 states, over 20% of the 5565 municipalities in the country and at 22.5 million persons, 12% of the country’s population. This region experiences recurrent and extended droughts and is characterized by low economic development, scarcity of natural resources including water, and difficult agricultural and livestock production. Local governments and communities need easily obtainable tools to aid their decision making process in managing risks associated with drought.MethodsTo inform decision-making at the level of municipalities, we investigated factors contributing to the health risks of drought. We used education and poverty indicators to measure vulnerability, number of drought damage evaluations and historical drought occurrences as indicators of hazard, and access to water as an indicator of exposure, to derive a drought disaster risk index.ResultsIndicators such as access to piped water, illiteracy and poverty show marked differences in most states and, in nearly all states, the living conditions of communities in the semiarid region are worse than in the rest of each state. There are municipalities at high drought disaster risk in every state and there are a larger number of municipalities at higher risks from the center to the north of the semiarid region.ConclusionsUnderstanding local hazards, exposures and vulnerabilities provides the means to understand local communities’ risks and develop interventions to reduce them. In addition, communities in these regions need to be empowered to add their traditional knowledge to scientific tools, and to identify the actions most relevant to their needs and realities.

Indicators in risk management: Are they a user-friendly interface between natural hazards and societal responses? Challenges and opportunities after UN Sendai conference in 2015

“…In addition, the Canadian case study proposes the Hazard Vulnerability Similarity Index which uses the local knowledge by comparing similarity between different sites, since learning is of key importance to resilience [29]. Finally, the traditional knowledge, possessed by local communities, should be merged with scientific tools to bring better understanding of local risks and more efficient risk management [90].…”

“…The study [90] hopes that its risk index would be useful in addressing some of Sendai's priority areas related to drought and health, [89] that the combination of approaches to assess physical vulnerability to debris flows would contribute to the resilience of mountain areas, and [40] is the only case study implementing Sendai regulative, carrying out the study of climate adaptability in the city of Beijing, China. In addition, the case studies of Ischia island [72], Venice [73] and Saudi Arabia [91], to state some of them.…”

“…The objective is to establish standards that have to be attained, in order to improve the level of education related to disasters. It seems that knowledge produced by scientists and policy makers is not fully understandable for general population [86] and that local knowledge is not used to enrich the existing scientific tools [90]. The initial step to enlarge human awareness are the established precise definitions of multi-risk concepts [75].…”

The cyanobacterial saxitoxin exacerbates neural cell death and brain malformations induced by Zika virus

“…Brazilian northeast (NE) usually faces periods of severe drought, with the most severe ever recorded occurring between 2012 and 2016 [4]. Besides reducing the reservoirs to critical volumes, which results in water supply deficiency [5], this rainy scarcity favors cyanobacterial blooms [6,7]. A literature survey of publications about cyanobacterias between 1930 and 2016 showed that the highest number of toxic bloom events occurred in Pernambuco (PE) state, where was described the presence of microcystins, cylindrospermopsin, five variants of saxitoxin (STX) and anatoxin-a(S) in freshwater [8].…”

The cyanobacterial saxitoxin exacerbates neural cell death and brain malformations induced by Zika virus

“…Brazilian northeast (NE) usually faces periods of severe drought, with the most severe ever recorded occurring between 2012 and 2016 (4). Besides reducing the reservoirs to critical volumes, which results in water supply deficiency (5), this rainy scarcity favors cyanobacterial blooms (6, 7). A literature survey of cyanobacteria publication from 1930 to 2016 showed that the highest number of toxic bloom events occurred in Pernambuco (PE) state, where was described the presence of microcystins, cylindrospermopsin, five variants of saxitoxin (STX) and anatoxin-a(S) in freshwater (8).…”