Index of Coastal Urban Resilience (ICURHF) When Coping with Hurricanes and Floods in the City of Chetumal, in the South East of Mexico

Abstract

The topic of resilience is essential in the natural disaster risk public management, which influences the quality of life of the people nowadays, specifically in the coastal cities that are the ones that in a near future will be more affected by hurricanes, and atypical rainfall, derived from the climatic change. There are various initiatives or agreements that contributed with evidence to commence the works focused on the increase of resilience in the cities, the most recent one is the Framework of Sendai 2015–2030, which promoted from public policies to global ones, such as the guide to determine resilience. This work proposes the introduction of an Index of Coastal Urban Resilience when coping with Hurricanes and Floods (ICURHF) of an urban location situated in the south east of Mexico (Chetumal). The Index is integrated by three components: Menace, Vulnerability and Capacity of Adaptation, each of them has a determined number of simple indicators which were classified, standardized, and assessed based on the technique known as judgment of experts. The results show that 60% of the city has a high resilience on the account of the indicators originated from the knowledge of the population about the risk of disasters - they are exposed to – when coping with the impact of hurricanes and floods. The remaining 40% registers a medium resilience corresponding to the Basic Geostatistical Areas (BGA’s) where the Menace is very high, and the Vulnerability is high. The principal contribution of this Index is the inclusion of qualitative indicators which strengthen the definition of resilience as a social construct.

We would like to thank Gerardo Quiroz Almaraz for his support in the translation.

Project financiad by Conacyt 248375, called: Resiliencia en ciudades costeras del Caribe Mexicano ante desastres por huracanes: Chetumal, Tulum y Playa del Carmen.