Rehabitar la Montaña: strategies and processes for sustainable communities in the mountainous periphery of Medellín
Thousands of poor, marginal communities’ residents die due to landslide events every year. The quick urbanization of mountainous areas, combined with an increased frequency of landslide events induced by heavy rains due to climate change, is leading to increased deaths year after year, and the problem will only get worse. Landscape Architects, trained to analyze and intervene in situations with complex natural and social territorial dynamics, are in position to make positive contributions to mitigating risks in such situations. A collaborative effort between a team of landscape architects from Germany and Urbanists in Medellin Colombia is carrying out a four-phased research and implementation proposal to anticipate and mitigate risk in low-income settlements on Medellin's urban periphery. They propose five pilot projects to test risk mitigation strategies through monitoring and early warning systems, drainage improvements, urban agriculture, slope forestation, and developing sites with the supplied services.
La gestión comunitaria del riesgo. Justicia espacial y ambiental
A successful community risk management experience is presented as part of neighborhood social construction, avoiding the conflict generated by the application of normative guidelines for the territorial ordering of Medellin (Colombia), and the adverse geomorphological conditions of a hillside context. For this, an action research methodology was applied, structured from participatory popular education scenarios with a neighborhood community: El Pacifico, located in the upper part of Comuna 8, on the northeast slope of Medellin. Based on this proposal, a community risk management and disaster prevention plan was formulated, contemplating the identification of socio territorial threats, risk reduction measures, and a programmatic component. Taking these results as a reference, we discuss the implications of community risk management and its ability to reduce the gap in socio-spatial inequities. In conclusion, community disaster risk management, combined with popular education practices and interaction between academia, the community, social organizations, and government institutions, can serve as a key practice for the realization of spatial and environmental justice in the city of Medellin.
Monsoons: Processes, predictability, and the prospects for prediction
The Tropical Ocean-Global Atmosphere (TOGA) program sought to determine the predictability of the coupled ocean-atmosphere system. The World Climate Research Programme's (WCRP) Global Ocean-Atmosphere-Land System (GOALS) program seeks to explore predictability of the global climate system through investigation of the major planetary heat sources and sinks, and interactions between them. The Asian-Australian monsoon system, which undergoes aperiodic and high amplitude variations on intraseasonal, annual, biennial and interannual timescales is a major focus of GOALS. Empirical seasonal forecasts of the monsoon have been made with moderate success for over 100 years. More recent modeling efforts have not been successful. Even simulation of the mean structure of the Asian monsoon has proven elusive and the observed ENSO-monsoon relationships has been difficult to replicate. Divergence in simulation skill occurs between integrations by different models or between members of ensembles of the same model. This degree of spread is surprising given the relative success of empirical forecast techniques. Two possible explanations are presented: difficulty in modeling the monsoon regions and nonlinear error growth due to regional hydrodynamical instabilities. It is argued that the reconciliation of these explanations is imperative for prediction of the monsoon to be improved. To this end, a thorough description of observed monsoon variability and the physical processes that are thought to be important is presented. Prospects of improving prediction and some strategies that may help achieve improvement are discussed.