Urban Vulnerability Assessment for Pandemic Surveillance—The COVID-19 Case in Bogotá, Colombia

Jeisson Prieto, Rafael Malagón, Jonatan Gomez and Elizabeth León
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Jeisson Prieto: Departamento de Matemáticas, Facultad de Ciencias, Universidad Nacional de Colombia, Bogotá 11001, Colombia
Rafael Malagón: Departamento de Salud Colectiva, Facultad de Odontología, Universidad Nacional de Colombia, Bogotá 11001, Colombia
Jonatan Gomez: Departamento de Ingeniería de Sistemas e Industrial, Facultad de Ingeniería, Universidad Nacional de Colombia, Bogotá 11001, Colombia
Elizabeth León: Departamento de Ingeniería de Sistemas e Industrial, Facultad de Ingeniería, Universidad Nacional de Colombia, Bogotá 11001, Colombia

Sustainability, 2021, vol. 13, issue 6, 1-13

Abstract: A pandemic devastates the lives of global citizens and causes significant economic, social, and political disruption. Evidence suggests that the likelihood of pandemics has increased over the past century because of increased global travel and integration, urbanization, and changes in land use with a profound affectation of society–nature metabolism. Further, evidence concerning the urban character of the pandemic has underlined the role of cities in disease transmission. An early assessment of the severity of infection and transmissibility can help quantify the pandemic potential and prioritize surveillance to control highly vulnerable urban areas in pandemics. In this paper, an Urban Vulnerability Assessment (UVA) methodology is proposed. UVA investigates various vulnerability factors related to pandemics to assess the vulnerability in urban areas. A vulnerability index is constructed by the aggregation of multiple vulnerability factors computed on each urban area (i.e., urban density, poverty index, informal labor, transmission routes). This methodology is useful in a-priori evaluation and development of policies and programs aimed at reducing disaster risk (DRR) at different scales (i.e., addressing urban vulnerability at national, regional, and provincial scales), under diverse scenarios of resources scarcity (i.e., short and long-term actions), and for different audiences (i.e., the general public, policy-makers, international organizations). The applicability of UVA is shown by the identification of high vulnerable areas based on publicly available data where surveillance should be prioritized in the COVID-19 pandemic in Bogotá, Colombia.

Keywords: urban vulnerability; vulnerability assessment; infectious diseases; pandemic; COVID-19 vulnerability index; spatial analysis (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O13 Q Q0 Q2 Q3 Q5 Q56 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021
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