The social vulnerability indicators for Bolivia are spread over the themes of population, economy, infrastructure, education,and health. The dataset of Bolivia is composed of 68 indicators at level P3 of subnational geographic organization given in 341 subdivisions distributed into parishes known in Bolivia as municipalities. The chart below (figure 1) explains the percentage of variables in the total dataset under each specific main theme.

Figure 1

Indicators are separated into groups (or sub-indices) that share the same dimension (e.g. population, economy, infrastructure, etc.). These individual indicators are aggregated into sub-indices, and the sub-indices are, in turn, aggregated to construct the final composite model. We employed a hierarchical approach so that each subcomponent of social vulnerability could be mapped and analyzed in isolation.

Table 1. Bolivia variables of social vulnerability

A correlation analysis was performed on the above variables (table 1). Highly correlated variables (Spearman’s R>0.700) were eliminated from further consideration to avoid subjectively choosing one variable over another for inclusion in subsequent analyses. The correlation analysis is useful in reducing the data to a set of variables that are parsimonious and acceptable to represent the social vulnerability of the population in Bolivia (table 2).

Table 2. Bolivia final variable selection

The spatial distribution of the social vulnerability across Bolivia explains the socio-economic conditions of the population at subnational level in the country. The following figures provide the social vulnerability subcomponents obtained for Bolivia. The education subcomponent (figure 1A) show high levels of social vulnerability at the subnational parishes surrounding major urban centres, The infrastructure component (figure 1B) refers to the access to basic services .e.g potable water and electricity, the spatial distribution show low levels of social vulnerability in the major cities where the access to basic services is greater than in rural parishes. The five components of social vulnerability (population, economy, education, infrastructure and health) (figure 1C-e) are subsequently summed and normalized to produce the final social vulnerability score. The spatial distribution of Bolivia’s social vulnerability (figure 2A) index shows high levels of vulnerability in the rural areas where the analysis confirms there are higher levels of education deficit, less access to health services, and limited access to basic services.
Figure 1

(A)	(B)

(C)	(D)	(E)

The integrated risk for Bolivia is obtained from combining the social vulnerability and the risk average annual losses indexes. High integrated risk can be understood as those subnational areas experiencing high seismicity, high physical earthquake risk, and high levels of social vulnerability. Bolivia’s south western areas are characterized for being in the high seismic risk zones of the country, figure 2A is the spatial distribution of the physical risk which shows high levels of risk towards the Andes mountains; meanwhile, the social vulnerability remains high across the country, especially in the rural parishes (figure 2B). The integrated risk (figure 2C) reveals high levels of risk at both urban and rural areas in the South West part of the country towards the limits with Chile and Peru. The major urban centers La Paz, Cochabamba, Potosi and the surrounding rural areas reveal high levels of risk. The impacts of an earthquake on the population and economy on these zones would have devastating consequences.
Figure 2

(A)	(B)	(C)