A Methodological Proposal to Disaster Risk Indicators in Brazil

This article provides a tool to help assess, visualise and communicate different levels of exposure, vulnerability and risk in Brazil. The Disaster Risk Index in Brazil may sensitise public and political decision-makers towards the important topic of disaster risk and climate change adaptation. This article aims to explore the feasibility and usefulness of such a national risk index that considers both natural hazard phenomena and social vulnerability. The results showed that the risk is strongly interwoven with social-economic and cultural conditions and normal everyday life, as well as with the performance of state institutions dealing with Disaster Risk Reduction and Disaster Risk Management, in other words, vulnerability. Spatial trends of disaster risk and vulnerability, products of this research, also have stressed the serious inequalities between and within regions of the country, which result in barriers to the development of the DRR and DRM in Brazil as a whole.