The Global Disaster Alert and Coordination System provides near real-time alerts about natural disasters around the world and tools to facilitate response coordination, including media monitoring, map catalogues and Virtual On-Site Operations Coordination Centre.

On 3/4/2010 1:02:44 PM UTC a change occurred in the eruption status of Volcano Poas in the very highly populated region of Costa Rica in COSTA RICA.

GDACS alert colors are established as follows, based on alert levels provided by the International Volcano Research Centre:

Less than 100000 people within 100km or no significant eruption is expected (alert levels 1 to 4).
Significant (explosive) eruption is occurring or expected (alert level 5) and more than 100,000 people live within 100km.
Significant (explosive) eruption is occurring or expected (alert level 5) and more than 1,000,000 people live within 100km.

Alert levels are taken from the International Volcano Research Centre. 

Location

Description

The Volcano is in COSTA RICA, 34km from the city of San Jos_. The nearest populated places are Cariblanco (9km), Buena Vista (8km), Toro (7km), Vara Blanca (9km), San Juan Norte (5km).

It is a mountainous region with a maximum altitude of 3414 m.

Getting there and away

The nearest civilian airport (San Pedro) is at 55km from the epicenter. The airfield of Juan Santamaria International is located at 23km from the epicenter. See the map for more details.

The geographical coordinates of the Volcano are: 10.2 North and 84.23 West.

About the data

Source: Southwest Volcano Research Centre (SWVRC): http://www.swvrc.org/

Explanation of alert level (from SWVRC)

• Alert level 0 = Volcano is dormant, normal seismic & fumarolic activity
• Alert level 1 = Volcano is restless; eruption may occur
• Alert level 2 = Volcano is in eruption or eruption may occur at any time
• Alert level 3 = Significant local eruption in progress
• Alert level 4 = Hazardous local eruption in progress
• Alert level 5 = Significant eruption is occurring or explosive eruption is expected at any time

Potentially affected People

The population in the area of this volcano is 275 people/km².

The volcano event occurred at 7h local time. At this time a day, more people are at work and therefore more vulnerable to collapsing office buildings. During traffic hours, people can be affected by collapsing bridges and other road infrastructure.

About the data

Population data: derived from the LandScan 2002 dataset provided by Oak Ridge National Laboratory, which disaggregated census data into pixels of ~1km² (or 30 arc seconds).

Resilience and Vulnerability

ECHO Intervention Priority Ranking for COSTA RICA
Rank: 85/132
Overall situation
Human Development
Human Poverty
Exposure to Major Disasters
Natural Disasters
Conflicts
Humanitarian effects of population movement
Refugees
Internally Displaced People
Health and Nutrition
Undernourishment
Mortality rates
Donor contributions
Official Development assistance
Source ECHO Key: Bad - Medium - Good - No data

Resilience is the capacity of the population to cope with a hazard. Since much of investments in Volcano preparedness and available funds for quick response is related to household income, the GDP per capita can be used as a rough indicator of resilience.

COSTA RICA has a GDP per capita of 3994 PPP$ (Parity Purchasing Power Dollar, about 1 Euro) and is therefore part of the low level income countries. Therefore, the Volcano is in an area of low resilience.

Based on the combination of 9 indicators, ECHO attributes COSTA RICA a medium vulnerability.

About the data

Exposure

Both conditions for survival and conditions for delivering aid strongly depend on the current weather and temperature. The following graphs show the current and forecast weather.
Current weather conditions and forecasts at Volcano location (lat: 10.2 - long: -84.23)

More detailed observations at closest weather station (San Pedro): WeatherByWeb - NOAA

About the data

Source: www.calle.com/world. The data is not very reliable, but it gives an indication for remote regions where more detailed information is not available. The data is interpolated for the given latitude and longitude from the closest airport weather stations.

Secondary effects

Probability of secondary effects:

• Landslides: The maximum slope in the area of the earthquake is 52.643% and the maximum altitude is 3414 m. Since this is a medium slope, the risk of earthquake induced landslides is medium. Note, however, that the slope data is not reliable on a local scale, while landslides depend very much on local topography, soil and meteorological conditions.
• Nuclear power plants: There are no nuclear facilities nearby the epicenter.

About the data

Landslides: slope and altitude are derived from the gtopo30 dataset provided by USGS. The thresholds used for landslide related slope classes are: 0-30% - low risk (green), 30-60% medium risk (orange), 60-100% high risk (red).

Nuclear radiation: the distance to nuclear installations is evaluated based on a 1999 UN dataset containing the location of nuclear plants in the world. If plants are near and the earthquake magnitude is above 6.5, the alert is set to orange. Note that the location of plants is approximate with errors of up to 100km.

Mapping material available on the DMA for COSTA RICA:

• Interactive Country map: http://dma.jrc.it/services/dmaexplorer/?Country=COSTA RICA
• Interactive Event map: click on maps below

image area: approx. 130x90km2 image area: approx. 65x45km2

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