Central America: New Portal for Disaster Risk Management launched

The Coordination Centre for Natural Disaster Prevention in Central America (CEPREDENAC) in Guatemala launched on 19 November 2012 an online Platform for Information and Communication for Integrated Risk Management: www.info-gir.org. The website offers a range of information and applications that help strengthen mechanisms for coordination and institutional and sectoral communication between the Central American countries. The tool will also provide decision makers with critical information how to minimizes the vulnerability of the population at risk and provide relief in emergency situations.

The portal is the result of a thorough process of review and evaluation of existing tools to generate, disseminate, access and use information relating to disaster risk management. The project was initiated in 2007 in response to the Central American countries' need to access and exchange updated information on this subject in a unified and standardized form on one single site.

"The Regional Platform of Information and Communication is an initiative integrated in the Central American policy for disaster risk management as a measure to facilitate the systematization and generation of information," said the Executive Secretary of CEPREDENAC, Ivan Morales.