NEW YORK, N.Y., Fri. Apr. 1, 2005: Natural calamities like earthquakes and tsunamis may be unpredictable, but Mother Nature’s danger zones in the Caribbean and around the world have now been mapped in a landmark report released this week. Researchers at New York’s Columbia University and the World Bank found the more than 90 percent of the population of the Dominican Republic, Haiti, St. Kitts & Nevis and Antigua & Barbuda in the Caribbean, are living in areas with higher risks of death from two or more types of natural hazards. Surprisingly, Dominica, which suffered two earthquakes last year, was found to be just over 8 percent exposed. The Cayman Islands and Jamaica, the other two Caribbean countries on the list, were found to be over 36 and 5 percent exposed, respectively. For the first time, scholars mapped out in detail hot spots around the globe that are prone to six of the deadliest types of natural hazards — earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, landslides, floods, droughts and hurricanes. The researchers broke down the most of the globe into 8 million grid cells of about 25 square kilometers each. They then mapped the risks of human and economic damage from six types of disaster, such as cyclones and landslides, on to each one and built up a picture of the world’s most exposed places. The most exposed country was found to be Taiwan followed by Costa Rica. “What surprised me is the extent of countries that are hit by multiple hazards,” said Arthur Lerner-Lam, a Columbia seismologist and co-author of the report. The World Bank, which has loaned $43 billion since 1980 for disaster-related projects around the globe, will use the new report to encourage that money be spent to prevent future death and destruction, rather than to take a Band-Aid approach after a calamity has already occurred. The World Bank also intends to encourage governments to invest in measures such as flood embankments and cyclone shelters by granting loans to countries who plan for disasters. Countries have already started to request money specifically for risk management, indicating that the message is getting through, says Plessis-Fraissard. "We must stop making it more complicated than it is," argues Debarati Guha-Sapir, director of the Center for Research on the Epidemiology of Disasters in Brussels, in response to advocates of new technologies. "If you want to reduce problems after disasters, you just have to protect people by giving them better housing, better education and better health services." Reprinted from hardbeatnews.com