This is the second such workshop, following one held in December 1998 in St. Lucia. During the week of 1 March 1999, the Caribbean Disaster Mitigation Project hosted a four-day regional workshop on Natural Hazard Mapping and Vulnerability Assessment . Over 30 physical planners and disaster coordinators from throughout the Caribbean met to review the development of hazard maps for the major natural hazards that affect the Caribbean, the use of these maps to develop assessments of vulnerability of life and property to these hazards and the incorporation of this hazard information into development planning and control and emergency management. This workshop is a follow-up to the Hazard Mitigation Planning Workshop , which was held in St. Lucia in July 1997. In bringing together disaster managers and physical planners from throughout the region, additional benefits were realized through furthering dialogue both between these professions and within the region on hazard mapping and vulnerability assessment.
Further information is available on the progress bulletin describing the workshop.
During the week of 25 January 1999, the Unit for Disaster Studies of the University of the West Indies, Mona campus, held a three-day workshop on landslide hazard mitigation and loss reduction in Kingston, Jamaica. The purpose of this workshop was to demonstrate the magnitude of landslides and related problems in the Kingston area, their direct and indirect effects on society, the constraints they place on current and future land use and the benefits of landslide hazard mitigation. Representatives of a broad range of government agencies and several private and non-governmental organizations participated in the workshop. During the first section, historical landslide information and landslide susceptibility maps that were developed under the CDMP Kingston multi-hazard assessment project were presented and discussed. These maps provide a basis for understanding the variability of landslide risk across the Kingston metropolitan area.