New Publications: “Climate risk assessment on infrastructure: A report about the bridge over the Tempisque river in Guardia, Costa Rica”

In 2017 a tropical storm in Costa Rica caused damages worth 577 Million dollars which are the equivalent of 1% of their GDP. Extreme floods, storms and hurricanes are increasing due to climate change. These hydro-meteorological events pose a big threat to the well-functioning of infrastructures as well as to the provision of those services. To name one example, the road surface as well as the structure of the bridge over the Tempisque river in Guardia was damaged during extreme floods.  Over 20 000 vehicles cross it every day, highlighting the socio-economic impact on the population.

To analyse the exposure and hazard of this infrastructure, a climate risk assessment was piloted based on the PIEVC Protocol. The multidisciplinary approach of this methodology required collaborative work between diverse organisations; from the Ministry of Environment and Energy (MINAE)  or the National Meteorological Institute (IMN) to the National Road Council (CONAVI), building thus new networks. Throughout the assessment, the current vulnerability of the bridge´s components were analysed as well as the impact of current and future hydro-meteorological events were estimated.

In a nutshell, the report provides decision-makers with necessary information to adopt adaptation measurements towards the operation of a climate-resilient bridge. Of equal importance is the development of capacities among the local population as well as the mainstream of the approach.

Lastly, the assessment has incentivised to develop a climate risk assessment tool tailor-made the to Costa Rican context. The report is only available in Spanish.

Download the full report here.

Recent News

Partnership OECS and GIZ

For six years now, the Organisation of Eastern Caribbean States (OECS) and GIZ’s Global Programme ‘Human Mobility in the Context of Climate Change’ have collaborated in their aim to human mobility as a consequence of the region’s increasing environmental challenges. A newly published article by the OECS describes how the partnership looked like and how the organisations took action through strategic thinking, capacity building, and publication of various knowledge products.

Read More »

Learning to live with climate change: Now available in 3 languages

Our publication ‘Learning to live with climate change’ is now available in three languages! Read more about how the Global Programme “Human Mobility in the Context of Climate Change” has been working in regions like the Pacific Islands, the Caribbean, East Africa and in the Philippines. The study is available in English, German and French.

Read More »

Global Programme HMCCC: Share-Fair Event

The GIZ’s Global Programme on Human Mobility in the Context of Climate Change celebrated the end of the first Programme phase. For this, partners from the Philippines, East and West Africa, the Pacific and the Caribbean came together at the GIZ Campus Röttgen in Bonn. The three-day long event took place from 24th until 26th October and incorporated a networking experience on the last day with experts from politics, decision-making, academia and civil society.

Read More »

New e-learning course on Human Mobility in the Context of Climate Change

The newly developed eLearning course by GIZ in collaboration with UN University is now available! In this interactive self-paced course, policy makers, development professionals, researchers and students will learn how climate change influences human mobility. By introducing key concepts like climate related migration, disaster displacement, planned relocation and trapped populations, this training will build capacities needed to consider human mobility in the context of climate change (HMCCC) in your respective field of work. The training showcases diverse examples from different countries on the phenomena of HMCCC as well as options how to manage it.

Read More »