Patterns of vulnerability and resilience to natural disasters in Argentina

Though Argentina does not attract the attention of the media and international humanitarian agencies, it remains a country highly prone to natural disasters, in particular floods. Among the 100 top disasters in terms of economic losses of the last century two occurred in Argentina.  In particular the northern province of Santa Fe is regularly devastated by floods causing loss of land, crops, housing and livelihoods to tens of thousands of people.

A flooded street in Santa Fe

Whereas macro-level data about economic losses caused by floods are available from several sources, there is a paucity of micro-level empirical research on the socio-economic impact of natural disasters in Argentina. The objective of this project is to support the Centro de Estudios Organizacionales of the University of Buenos Aires to strengthen its conceptual and empirical research capacity on socio-economic dimensions of disasters through a training for junior and senior researchers, and representatives of government and civil society organizations on “Assessing vulnerability and resilience to natural disasters: concepts and methods” to be held at the University of Buenos Aires in March 2008.  As a strategy to create a link between theories, concepts, research methods and the reality on the ground the training will be followed by an empirical research on the impact of floods on local livelihoods in multiple urban and rural sites of the province of Santa Fe.

For further details, please contact:

Dr. Jennifer Duyne Barenstein
World Habitat Resarch Unit (WHRU)
Institute for Sustainability Applied to the Built Environment (ISAAC)
Department of Environment, Constructions and Design  (DACD)
University of Applied Sciences of Southern Switzerland (SUPSI)
Email: jennifer.duyne@supsi.ch

Prof. Dr. Jorge Walter
Centro de Estudios Organizacionales
Facultad de Ciencias Economicas
Universidad de Buenos Aires
Email: walter@udesa.edu.ar