Bogotá, Colombia, 10 July 2012. As part of the seminar “Infrastructure for Climate Change”, the Latin American Development Bank (CAF) presented Geopolis, a network for the management and reduction of disaster risk. This network has been created to develop a comprehensive vision for the execution of infrastructure projects that facilitate social and economic growth in a sustainable way.

Geopolis seeks to become a think tank that will strengthen institutional capacity and build a culture of disaster prevention. Geopolis will link a network of leading academic specialists and scientists to generate practical recommendations in response to natural phenomena in the region.

According to Mr Antonio Juan Sosa, CAF infrastructure vice president, the Network seeks to identify threatening situations, reduce vulnerability and strengthen the capacity of citizens to overcome potentially destructive events through specific projects.

The initial phase of Geopolis will address three areas: planning and institutional development, climate change and earthquake-resistant engineering. The first area will include strengthening disaster risk reduction capacity of intercity road network, energy generation and transmission systems, and ports.
The second area will assess the behaviour of glaciers, determine water availability in the nearby cities of glaciers and analyse the impact of climate change on water resources and the adaptation capacity of countries.

Finally, the third area will comprise an assessment of the current standards on earthquake resistant engineering in the region, as well as a comparison of the different criteria used, the minimal criteria for standards and the creation of an initial network and an analysis group.

“We already have a group of specialists from Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Ecuador and Venezuela, who will be joined by experts from Argentina, the Dominican Republic and Peru. In cooperation with them, we analyse each country’s seismic standards, encourage cooperation and will offer a proposal for research and development projects. Nevertheless we will mostly focus on quantifying risk elements that may enable better decision taking in the development of infrastructure,” said the CAF infrastructure vice president.

Geopolis aims to influence the social acquisition of knowledge by supporting the public sector, private businesses and communities. Besides strengthening financial projects in pursuit of development, Geopolis also has an important social mission to strengthen populations. In other terms, Geopolis aims to focus on the importance of planning as a requirement for building the society.

Source: www.caf.com