Data Sources

For Central America and the Caribbean, the quality of the exposure data varies significantly depending on the country. For example, nations like Costa Rica, the Dominican Republic and Honduras have information on population, dwellings and establishments. Moreover, it exists in the form of online databases that are constantly updated and can be processed to obtain specific information, such as the size of the dwellings or the number of employees in an industrial facility (e.g. INEC 2018, INE 2018, ONE 2018). On the other hand, other countries have official databases that have not been updated recently (e.g. El Salvador) or simply do not possess such systems, as is the case of Haiti (e.g. DIGESTYC 2018, IHSI 2018). A regional exposure model must capture differences in construction practices across the region as well. For example, in cities in the Caribbean (e.g. Santiago de Cuba and Santo Domingo) where tropical storms are a historical concern, concrete slab roofs are a common construction practice in masonry structures, whereas this is not the case in most cities of Central America. Socio-economic factors may also influence the quality of the building stock. Notably, the level of building code compliance is remarkably different across neighbouring territories like Costa Rica and Nicaragua or the Dominican Republic and Haiti. The former countries have seismic provisions since the seventies, while in the latter either they do not exist or are simply not properly enforced. Nonetheless, the number of dwellings that present qualitative deficiencies (e.g. walls made of waste materials) in Nicaragua doubles that of Costa Rica (Estado de la Región, 2016). These are attributes that influence the response of structures during strong ground shaking and should be properly captured during the modelling process.

The aforementioned challenges were addressed using local databases, peer-reviewed studies, technical reports and remote-sensing datasets. Furthermore, over 80 professionals in the fields of civil engineering and governance from Central America and the Caribbean were involved in the development of the exposure models proposed herein. They provided expert knowledge on key modelling parameters, such as local construction practices, common building classes and number of storeys, replacement costs and code compliance. This feedback was extensively used as a direct input in the modelling process. Furthermore, three workshops were organized in Central America (San José – November, 2016 and May 2017) and the Caribbean (Santo Domingo – March, 2018) to validate the models and verify the exposure results. Their contribution was summarized in a compendium of information that will be referred throughout this document simply as local expert knowledge.

The most complete and up-to-date databases containing exposure information at the national scale are the national population and household census. Every country in Central America and the Caribbean (except for Haiti) provides information about the total number of households by administrative division that is either publicly available or can be acquired upon request. Therefore, both population and household census were taken from the respective statistical offices to determine the total number of dwellings and spatial distribution of the residential building stock at the smallest administrative division available. Commercial and industrial data are much less detailed, and commonly only the number and size of the facilities are available. The following table presents the consulted databases, the number of dwellings and (commercial or industrial) establishments.

Country (year)	Population	Dwellings	Commercial	Industrial	Sources (consulted)
Guatemala (2002)	16,176,133	2,574,908	226,352	49,595	INE
Cuba (2012)	11,167,328	3,644,001	4,806	3,410	ONE
Haiti (2013)	10,291,060	N.A	N.A	N.A	IHSI
Dom. Republic (2010)	9,445,367	2,662,794	17,421	4,334	ONE
Honduras (2013)	8,249,574	1,837,855	134,658	14,689	INE
Salvador (2007)	6,377,195	1,372,831	140,872	21,079	DYGESTIC
Nicaragua (2005)	6,167,237	983,928	142,982	32,247	INIDE
Costa Rica (2011)	4,301,006	1,360,625	37,829	10,190	INEC
Panama (2010)	4,058,374	1,082,881	57,157	7,617	INEC
Jamaica (2011)	2,697,053	881,021	34,547	16,221	STATIN
Trinidad and Tobago (2000)	1,114,777	313,032	9,532	20,042	CSO
Belize (2010)	374,681	79,235	7,456	1,372	SIB
Barbados (2010)	277,819	78,934	4,727	1,111	BSS

These results indicate that over 75 million people, 14 million residential dwellings and over a million commercial or industrial facilities exist in Central America and the Caribbean as of 2023. As the year of the census indicates, some of the databases are over a decade old. This is an important limitation of the main input data, since population and dwellings can change significantly in 10 years. Furthermore, developing exposure models that represent population and building stocks at different time intervals would hinder a direct comparison of risk metrics across countries. Therefore, in the cases with databases prior to 2010, namely Nicaragua, Guatemala, El Salvador, Trinidad and Tobago and Haiti, it was necessary to combine the household database with other sources of population information (e.g. United Nations Population Prospects) to bring the exposed number of people and dwellings up to date.