About risks diagnosis

Abstract

The starting point in risk diagnosis for a region is the study of the environmental dangers. The metodological resource proposed in this paper to determine the danger of a site with its corresponding diagnosis chartes, is the result of a sintesis combining classical investigations with the novelty of a common framework for natural and anthropic dangers, through the perception, that works as a transductor, that puts in the same level both dangers in the social collective representations of the site people. Another relevant step in the way to diagnosis of risks is the evaluation of people´s vulnerability, permanent in time and associated with socio-cultural aspects. As a result of this we include as vulnerability variables the educational level, the economical level and the social integration. The combination of all this variables in a global vulnerability index allows for reconozing populations with high and low vulnerability. On the basis of danger diagnosis and vulnerability chart´s, we draft risk charts as a necessary basement for risk mitigation in a human community, in this case the population of Caucete, a small city of the Province of San Juan, in the West of Argentina.