El Salvador - GFDRR
El Salvador - GFDRR
El Salvador - GFDRR
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118 | <strong>El</strong> <strong>Salvador</strong>: Damage, Loss, and Needs Assesment<br />
Pillar 1: Risk Identification and Evaluation<br />
For the effective identification and reduction of disaster risks and the promotion of a culture of resilience,<br />
it is necessary to understand the hazards and the physical, social, economic and environmental factors<br />
of vulnerability to disasters faced by the population, as well as the processes of change in hazards and<br />
vulnerability factors in the short and long terms, in order to adopt timely measures in terms of this<br />
knowledge.<br />
It is necessary to develop, improve and expand systems of disaster risk indicators and of vulnerability at<br />
national, departmental, municipal and local levels that allow the responsible authorities to analyze, predict<br />
and model the impact of disasters on social, economic and environmental conditions, and to disseminate<br />
the results among the responsible authorities, citizens and exposed populations.<br />
It is also necessary to standardize methodologies and terminologies for the assessment of risks and<br />
the dissemination of studies, as well as to keep information from being scattered. Efforts must be made<br />
to coordinate the conduction of studies with educational strategies.<br />
To achieve this target, it is necessary, among other things, to periodically update and widely disseminate<br />
risk maps and related information among responsible authorities, citizens in general, and exposed<br />
communities in language that is accessible to all sectors of the population and particularly to the most<br />
vulnerable sectors.<br />
Pillar 2: Risk Mitigation to Reduce Exposure to Natural Hazards<br />
Civil Protection manages an early warning system to save lives and move the population away from zones<br />
of immediate risk. Among non-physical measures, it is necessary to strengthen and maintain early warning<br />
systems in order to be able to warn exposed people in a timely, clear and effective manner, taking into<br />
account the demographic features, gender, culture, way of living and other specific characteristics of the<br />
populations involved, providing clear guidance on how to act in the event of an alert and contributing<br />
to the effectiveness of interventions by those in charge of handling disaster situations and by other<br />
authorities.<br />
In recent years, the monitoring system throughout the country, which forms the basis for the chain<br />
of information on natural hazards, has been affected by various disasters. Monitoring points have been<br />
reduced and have not been restored. It is necessary to reestablish and maintain rainfall monitoring stations<br />
in exposed populations in order to monitor the hourly intensities of precipitation and to adopt plans to<br />
evacuate exposed homes when critical levels of rainfall are reached. The stations should be operated by<br />
local authorities who are trained to deal with critical situations. The data should also be available in real<br />
time in the Bureau of the National Service for Territorial Studies (D-SNET) of the Ministry of Environment<br />
and Natural Resources (MARN).<br />
Likewise, it is necessary to strengthen the capacities of the Ministry of Environment and Natural Resources,<br />
and in particular those of the Bureau of the National Service for Territorial Studies, for the development<br />
of skills with regard to improving the understanding of risks, monitoring phenomena of climate<br />
and natural origin, disseminating information, incorporating risk management in development plans,