Dominican Republic: Identifying Risk to Protect Schools in the Dominican Republic

Context and Objectives
The project aimed to strengthen risk assessment and mapping of critical public infrastructure in the Dominican Republic to inform national resilience building. Specifically, the project aimed to build the capacity of the Ministry of Education and the National Emergency Commission to conduct risk assessments and mapping.

Main Activities and results

The ACP-EU NDRR project implemented activities aiming to:

• Strengthen government capacity to fill existing information gaps related to evaluation and mapping of critical infrastructure (schools).
• Provide training to the Government and equipment to scale up the Government's mapping of schools.

The following results were achieved:

• The project strengthened the capacity of the Ministry of Education to evaluate disaster risk for public schools using the “Safe School Index,” which has now been applied in 48 schools as planned for under the project.
• The Ministry of Education was supported in training and certifying 5 regional commissions that will be able to replicate the Safe School Index assessments in other schools in the future. 
• Three hazard maps (drought, flooding and wildfire) have been produced for the 48 schools assessed.
• All delegates of the National Emergency Commission completed Geographic Information System- and Open-Data Platform trainings to be able to produce and use basic hazard maps of schools.
• Two manuals on flood and drought maps were produced that can be used for capacity-building activities after the end of the project.

Partners and Coordination
The project was a partnership consisting of Plan Dominican Republic, Oxfam Dominican Republic, Habitat for Humanity and the World Bank. The project was developed following a successful pilot approach supported by the European Commission Humanitarian Aid and Civil Protection Department’s Disaster Preparedness programme (DIPECHO) funding mechanism in the Dominican Republic.

This project was implemented in collaboration with the Autonomous University of Santo Domingo (UASD), a state university. There was close collaboration with the Civil Society Disaster Risk Reduction Forum, a national platform for different local/international actors involved in DRR, operational since 2007, of which the World Bank is a member.