Virginia Jimenez
Geographer Virginia Jiménez’s professional experience has been in the analysis of problems of integrated risk management in urban areas prone to natural hazards. She has participated in consultancy work at the national, regional, and local level, for both public and private sectors on risk management and disasters in Venezuela. She has worked on the technical aspects of natural hazards zoning; risk identification and its application to land and urban planning; social vulnerability surveys; community based disaster management strategy for earthquakes and community-based studies for resettlement of high risk areas; and aspects of community and institutional strengthening in risk management as a cross-cutting issue for disaster risk reduction. Jimenez led a team that produced a guideline on “Risk Reduction: Actions for the Construction of a State Policy,” which later became a book.
She has worked for such regional projects as Disaster Prevention for the Andean Community (PREDECAN), and Risk Reduction in Andean Capitals, and has also participated in post-disaster recovery and reconstruction processes in Central America.
She teaches postgraduate courses at Universidad Central de Venezuela and Universidad Simon Bolivar in Caracas, and is currently designing a course on risk anagement for officials at municipal-local level. Jimenez is a research associate of the Research Centre for Comprehensive Risk Management and a member of the Social Studies on Disaster Prevention Network in Latin America (LA RED).
