Nat Hazards (2007) 40:339356 DOI 10.

1007/s11069-006-0018-6 RESEARCH ARTICLE

Vulnerability assessment in a volcanic risk evaluation in Central Mexico through a multi-criteria-GIS approach
Jose Fernando Aceves-Quesada Jesus Daz-Salgado Jorge Lopez-Blanco

Received: 12 May 2005 / Accepted: 7 March 2006 / Published online: 30 October 2006 Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2006

Abstract The Valley of Toluca is a major industrial and agricultural area in Central Mexico, especially the City of Toluca, the capital of The State of Mexico. The Nevado de Toluca volcano is located to the southwest of The Toluca Basin. Results obtained from the vulnerability assessment phase of the study area (5,040 km2 and 42 municipalities) are presented here as a part of a comprehensive volcanic risk assessment of The Toluca Basin. Information has been gathered and processed at a municipal level including thematic maps at 1:250,000 scale. A database has been built, classied and analyzed within a GIS environment; additionally, a Multi-Criteria Evaluation (MCE) approach was applied as an aid for the decision-making process. Cartographic results were ve vulnerability maps: (1) Total Population, (2) Land Use/ Cover, (3) Infrastructure, (4) Economic Units and (5) Total Vulnerability. Our main results suggest that the Toluca and Tianguistenco urban and industrial areas, to the north and northeast of The Valley of Toluca, are the most vulnerable areas, for their high concentration of population, infrastructure, economic activity, and exposure to volcanic events. Keywords Vulnerability Volcanic risk Multi-criteria evaluation Nevado de Toluca Volcano Central Mexico

Introduction The Valley of Toluca is located in Central Mexico at an altitude of 2,600 m above sea level (masl), and approximately 70 km west of Mexico City. The City of Toluca is located in the

J. F. Aceves-Quesada J. Daz-Salgado J. Lopez-Blanco (&) Institute of Geography, National University of Mexico, Circuito Exterior, Cd. Universitaria, CP 04510, Mexico DF, Mexico e-mail: jlopezblanco@hotmail.com J. F. Aceves-Quesada e-mail: faceves@geofisica.unam.mx

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valley and is the capital of The State of Mexico. In the conterminous of Toluca City a large industrial complex has developed, which in turn has fostered the citys expansion, leading to the incorporation of several municipalities to the urban area, including Toluca, Lerma, Metepec, Zinacantepec and San Mateo Atenco. This has resulted in a large urban area of about two million inhabitants (INEGI 2001b) (Fig. 1). Another industrial complex has grown to the east of The Valley of Toluca, including the municipalities of Tianguistenco, Ocoyoacac, Calpulhuac and Almoloya del Ro. The Nevado de Toluca Volcano (Zina cantecatl in the Nahuatl language) is located to the southwest of the valley; it is a large volcanic structure rising to 4,636 m asl that has undergone violent eruptions during its recent geologic history (Aceves 1997), and in the event of being reactivated it would represent a signicant hazard for the valley of Toluca. This study is part of a broader investigation on volcanic risk in the Nevado de Toluca area (Aceves et al. 2006).

Conceptual framework Many scientists have developed the concept of volcanic hazard as the set of events taking place in a volcano that may cause damages to people and properties exposed to them (Arana and Ortiz 1996). Vulnerability is the expectation of damage or loss that may be inicted to an element exposed and conditioned to a potential volcanic event of varying severity. It is measured as the percentage of total damages or losses associated to the potential event (Arana and Ortiz 1996; Tilling 1989). The total volcanic risk has been dened as the predictable consequences of a volcanic event in terms of loss of life and injuries, and destruction of specic types of properties or other kind of economic loss (Crandell et al. 1984). In order to mitigate these effects, vulnerability, hazard, and risk maps have been derived from a number of assessment works over the past decades to predict the path and impact of the different volcanic materials which may potentially be ejected. In several places some works have been conducted with disaster-mitigation aims. Fournier DAlbe (1979) conducted a study on the prediction and mitigation of volcanic eruptions to establish risk levels based on three factors: (1) Population and the threatened material goods; (2) The proportion of those possibly affected and (3) The probability of occurrence of a volcanic hazard. During the 1980s decade, UNESCO prompted the fulllment of several works aimed at mitigating natural disasters, dedicating a series of works to volcanic hazard and riskassessment, recommending the identication of high-risk volcanoes and the development of stratigraphic and volcanologic studies to identify hazards from past events (emitted products, cyclicity, magnitude of events, etc.; Westercamp 1982; Crandell et al. 1984; Yokoyama et al. 1984; Rosi 1996; National Land Agency Government of Japan 1992; Gomez-Fernandez 1998, 2000; Lirier and Veteli 1998; Stieltjes and Mirgon 1998; Pareschi et al. 2000; Torrieri et al. 2002). Stieltjes and Mirgon (1998) developed a method to assess the vulnerability of Martinique Island, in the event of a new eruption by Mount Pelee. They considered that the vulnerability of communities is linked with many factors, namely social, demographic, economic, cultural, physical, technical, functional and institutional, which could be grouped into two broad sets of factors, permanent (relief, constructions, and existing infrastructure) and conjectural factors (seasonal variations in population size, eruption type, meteorological conditions, etc.).

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Fig. 1 Location map of the study area including the 40 municipalities

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Vulnerability is a very complex concept, and whatever the origin of the natural hazard, its approximation could be considered as a two-level approach: the preliminary qualitative analysis of vulnerability factors makes it possible to estimate the response capability of a community against a threatening event. The quantitative vulnerability analysis makes it possible to measure the direct impact of a phenomenon on a community and its environment (Van Westen 1997; Stieltjes and Mirgon 1998). In Mexico, the most important works about volcanic hazards have been the maps of the Popocatepetl (Macias et al. 1995), Colima (Martin del Pozo et al. 1995), Nevado de Toluca (Aceves et al. in press) and Pico de Orizaba (Sheridan et al. 2001) volcanoes. The history of activity of these volcanoes shows very explosive eruptions (mainly of the plinian and vulcanian types) accompanied by ash fall, pyroclastic ows, lahars and debris avalanches. Those hazard maps were important in evaluating the distance, direction and frequencies of those deposits to establish the potential hazard areas in case of a new eruption. The Nevado de Toluca (NDT) is a large composite volcano, whose geological history has undergone two major active phases. The rst one occurred 1.2 million years ago, when the formation of the volcanic building began. The emitted products were lava-ows (andesitic composition); lahars and some pyroclastic ows (Aceves et al. 2006; Bloomeld et al. 1977; Macias et al. 1997). The second active phase began some 100,000 years ago (Cantagrel et al. 1981), although most of the activity concentrated on the past 50,000 years (Aceves 1998; Aceves et al. 2006). This phase is characterized by the presence of large eruptions every 12,000 years, approximately. In this phase materials of dacitic composition prevailed (Bloomeld et al. 1977). A reconstruction of the Nevado de Toluca volcanos eruptive history has been carried out by our team based on detailed eldwork, using information derived from more than 150 stratigraphic sections, along with photointerpretation techniques and cartographic analyses, and supplemented with literature surveys about the volcanos geological characteristics (Bloomeld et al. 1977; Cantagrel et al. 1981; Macias et al. 1997; Solleiro et al. 2004). This reconstruction shows that, in the past 50,000 years, the Nevado de Toluca has experienced eight phreatomagmatic, four plinian, three subplinian and one-ultraplinian eruptions. In addition, the NDT has suffered two structural collapses that generated two debris avalanches in the past 100,000 years (Aceves et al. 2006).

Materials and methods The database search, transformation and integration (in a digital format) were done from hardcopies of thematic maps at 1:250,000 scale from the Instituto Nacional de Estadstica, Geografa e Informatica agency (INEGI), as well as gathering information from a census at a municipality level published by INEGI (2001a, b, c). From this information, a cartographic-statistical database was elaborated, composed by thematic maps and attribute tables. The GIS used for information processing activities were ILWIS (ITC 1998) and IDRISI (Eastman 1997) software-packages. The rst one was used considering its capability for handling vector geographic database and for its user-friendly digitizing procedure of geographic features. The second, which allows the processing of geographic information in raster format (pixels) was used for further potential handling of thematic information; it also contains powerful overlaying and interpolation tools that allow handling complex methods in the decision-making process approach, like the Multi-Criteria analysis applied in this work (Bosque et al. 1994). The high quality of information generated by the INEGI

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agency is worth noting, which allowed us to complement the eldwork carried out to determine the volcanos geologic history and the areas covered with pyroclastic materials from previous eruptions, where many settlements and infrastructure are now settled. Once the maps were digitized in the vector format they were rasterized using a framework of rowcolumn (713 rows, 418 columns, 125-m pixel size) array previously built in the IDRISI GIS software-package (Eastman 1997). A rasterizing process was applied to each one of the thematic maps in order to assign a numerical attribute to each pixel, according to the thematic fact that it represents. Parallel to the above process, we identied the main factors or criteria that impact the valleys vulnerability to a greater or lesser extent. In this way, four factors (criteria) were identied and assessed in this study: (1) Total population, (2) Infrastructure, (3) Economic units and (4) Land-use and cover distribution. For this purpose we used environmental and socioeconomic information from maps and statistics at a municipality level, as follows: population amount, main urban and rural areas, length and type of highways, number of schools, number of rural clinics and hospitals, number and extension of agricultural units (in ha), number of economic units and total economic production (in thousands of pesos), and the land use/cover types as well. Criteria used for taking these factors into consideration are based on results presented in Yokoyama et al. (1984), Aguilar and Sanchez (1993), Scott (1993), Stieltjes and Mirgon (1998) and Torrier et al. (2002). These authors consider that human population represents the most vulnerable element, hence it has been considered as the most important factor in this assessment. Next in importance is the infrastructure factor, which according to its development, magnitude and extent, could affect the population vulnerability (its loss), however, would also represent a higher cost depending of their losses. The third factor, in order of importance, is the economic production (agriculture, industry, services, etc.). The assessment and combination of factors were carried out using a decision-making approach known as Multi-Criteria Evaluation (MCE) integrated in a GIS environment. This approach has recently been used in other elds of science, but references for volcanic hazard and vulnerability assessment are scarce (Torrieri et al. 2002). In the past decade, MCE has received renewed attention in the context of GIS-based decision-making (Pereira and Duckstein 1993; Heywood et al. 1995; Malczewsky 1996; Tkach and Simonovic 1997; Simonovic and Nirupama 2005). This combination has proved to be useful in solving conicting situations for individuals or groups interested in the spatial context (Malczewski 1996; Janssen and Rietved 1990) and it is also a powerful approach for land-suitability assessments (Joerin et al. 2001). This approach has been used to integrate and simultaneously assess a series of elements oriented towards a specic objective, applying decision rules, based on analysis, discussion and hierarchies of alternatives in order to make decisions on land-suitability problems (Daz Salgado and Lopez Blanco 2000, 2001; Ceballos-Silva and Lopez-Blanco 2003a, b; Torrieri et al. 2002). Based on the objective of evaluating the vulnerability associated with volcanic hazards, a decision rule set was chosen and structured, which integrates the assessment and ranking criteria (in this case four) established from the outlined objective, and the selection of alternatives, represented by the spatial objects (pixels) contained in the thematic layers (digital maps). Thus, each criterion constitutes a thematic map in the GIS database, and in this phase, we understood the major importance for the total evaluation, of the factor selection process (criteria) in a consistent and objective way. The MCE is based on integrating all criteria and alternatives in a pair-comparison matrix (PCM), named as of decision or evaluation as well, where criteria are in the main column, and alternatives in

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the main row, and in the inner cells punctuations derived from the assessment resulted from the experts evaluation. These punctuations represent the value, preference level, degree of attraction or signicance that each alternative has obtained in each criterion (Barredo-Cano 1996). In this way, categories or classication levels will be assigned considering the quantitative values corresponding to criteria in the pair-comparison matrix process (Table 1). Since they are generally measured in nominal or qualitative scale, in published printed maps or from bibliographic sources, it was necessary to convert them to a common scale of intervals or ranks. These intervals allowed us to make an assessment and interpretation of thematic-map information of criteria for each one of alternatives with the purpose of representing the different vulnerability values, and, nally leading to the alternative classication from low to high vulnerability levels (0 to 4 in this case), according to the punctuation scale established. Once the assessment matrix and the thematic vulnerability maps were established, we set the relative importance among criteria, because not all of them have the same inuence or preference of intensity according to the type of evaluation projected, and they were assigned to a specic weight value. This assign was strongly based on previous references, points of view and experience of specialists (researchers, decision makers and land management workers), consultation and opinion polls with experts on each criterion or topic, bibliographic references, and taking into account the characteristics of the study area that is at volcanic risk. There are different approaches for weighting criteria. One of the most extensively used in the MCE-GIS spatial research is known as the Hierarchical Analytical Process (HAP).
Table 1 Decision matrix to establish vulnerability levels considering criteria categories Criteria Vulnerability level Value 1 low vulnerability Total Total population population per municipality <10,000 inhabitants Land use/cover No vegetated area Alpine grassland Cattail and sedge wetland Infrastructure Medical units per municipality <5 Schools per municipality <10 Highway length per municipality <50 km Economic units Medical units per municipality 515 Schools per municipality 1050 Highway length per municipality 50100 km Value 2 medium vulnerability Total population per municipality 10,00150,000 inhabitants Juniper forest Grassland Value 3 high vulnerability Total population per municipality 50,001400,000 inhabitants Rain-fed agriculture Quercus forest Cloud mountain forest Cattle use grassland Medical units per municipality 1650 Schools per municipality 51250 Highway length per municipality 101200 km Value 4 very high vulnerability Total population per municipality >400,000 inhabitants Urban areas Irrigating agriculture Pinus forest

Medical units per municipality >50 Schools per municipality >250 Highway length per municipality >200 km

Gross total product Gross total product Gross total product Gross total product (thousands of pesos) (thousands of pesos) (thousands of pesos) (thousands of pesos) per municipality per municipality per municipality per municipality >500,000 100,001500,000 10,000100,000 <10,000

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Saaty (1980) developed this technique and in more recent years Eastman (1997) implemented it in the GIS IDRISI as the weighted linear combination module. This method is based on the development of a square matrix, known as the pairwise comparison matrix, in which the number of criteria to weight will determine the number of rows and columns to be considered. Each column and row in the matrix is labeled with the name of one of the criterion (following the same order in both axes, from left to right in columns and from top to bottom in rows). Only the bottom-left triangle in the matrix will be evaluated since the topright portion is symmetrically identical. Next, cells are lled, comparing the relative importance of the criterion of each row in relation to the criterion of the corresponding column, advancing from column to column, from left to right. The comparison allows establishing hierarchies or weights for the various criteria, thereby assigning a relative value of weight to each of them against the other ones, based on a scale of trials of value or levels of importance established by the same procedure. The scale used for weight assign is a numeric scale including 17 values or hierarchies that go from a minimum value of 1/9 (the less important), up to nine (the most important). Obviously, in the matrix diagonal, values of 1 are assigned only to those factors that denote equality; if two factors have the same importance they will be given a value of 1 (see Fig. 2). The GIS IDRISI contains modules that allow to carry out the automated procedure of matrix addition by means of overlaying and multiplying each map by a constant (criteria weight), producing a new map, of vulnerability level in this case, with values ranging from 1 to 4 per pixel, being 4 the value with the highest vulnerability level. Besides establishing the weighting criteria, the MCE procedure used in this work also offers a quantitative measure of consistency among the relationships obtained from simultaneous criteria compared. A consistency index indicates the probability of have been assigned values in a randomly way. Values below 0.1 indicate good consistency; when they exceed that limit recalculating the matrix is necessary. Figure 3 illustrates the methodological diagram followed in this study, including the two more important stages in this study: (1) Vulnerability per criterion determination and (2) Multi-Criteria evaluation (MCE) procedure.

Results The study area comprises 40 municipalities, 37 belonging to The State of Mexico, two to The State of Guerrero and one to The State of Morelos (Fig. 1). The processed information was reviewed and transformed at a municipality level. The City of Toluca, which is the State of Mexicos capital, concentrates most of the public services, fostering its growth and making of it an attraction pole for immigration, this causes a disproportionate spatial and population growth compared to all other municipalities (INEGI 2001a, b, c). The growth of

Fig. 2 The 17 hierarchies scale of relative importance to construct the pair comparison matrix

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Fig. 3 Methodological diagram used to obtain vulnerability maps of the Toluca Basin, Central Mexico

Toluca city has incorporated some municipalities to its urban area (such as Lerma, Zinacantepec, Metepec, San Mateo Atenco), resulting in a large urban zone of approximately two million inhabitants, plus an important industrial region. Second in importance are the municipalities of Tenancingo and Tenango, with a little more than 50,000 inhabitants each. Next, with a population between 25,000 and 50,000 inhabitants each, are the municipalities of Calimaya, Calpulhuac, Coatepec, Ixtapan de la Sal and Villa Guerrero. The remaining municipalities have less than 25,000 inhabitants. The municipalities of Ocoyoacac, Calpulhuac and Santiago Tianguistenco also host an important industrial park, with a population of nearly 120,000 inhabitants together (Fig. 4). With respect to the total highway length (Primary and Secondary Roads), the municipality of Toluca has the highest value with over 400 km. Next, Zinacantepec, Villa Guerrero, Tenango, Tenancingo, Malinalco, Ixtapan de la Sal and Coatepec with a rank from 100 km to 200 km. The remaining municipalities have less than 100 km of highways (Fig. 5). Regarding the number of schools (Fig. 6), Toluca concentrates the largest number of education centers with a little more than 600, followed by Zinacantepec, Villa Guerrero, Tenancingo and Coatepec, which comprise in the rank of 100 to 200 education centers. All other municipalities are in the rank of lesser than 100 schools. Figure 7 shows health-care services delivered in health-care units, including hospitals and rural clinics. Again, the municipality of Toluca is the area with the most important health-care infrastructure, with 93 health-care units, of which ten are hospitals. Next, with a much smaller number of medical units, is Zinacantepec, with 14 units and none hospital. Besides the Toluca City, only Ixtapan de la Sal, Metepec, Tenancingo and Coatepec have hospitals. The remaining municipalities have less than ten rural clinics, and none of them has hospitals.

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Fig. 4 Number of inhabitants per municipality

Vulnerability maps For the vulnerability analysis, many socioeconomic variables that can be taken into account. These variables depend on physical, social, economical and cultural characteristics of each region. Table 1 shows the evaluation matrix for the four criteria chosen. Vulnerability level intervals were established based on the number of estimated losses and damages should a volcanic hazard event occur. The rst variable established, according to the recommendations of works on evaluation of natural risks revised for this research (Westercamp 1982), and which should be considered as the most important variable, is the population. The vulnerability map for the total population (Fig. 8A) was delineated based on the population living in each municipality, resulting in a classication of municipalities into four categories, according to the highest and the lowest values, and according to the following criteria: municipalities with more than 400,000 inhabitants represent areas of very high vulnerability (value 4), municipalities with population ranging from 50,001 to 400,000 have a high vulnerability (value 3); municipalities with population from 10,000 to 50,000 have moderate vulnerability (value 2); and municipalities with less than 10,000 inhabitants represent areas with low vulnerability level (value 1). In the making of the vulnerability map according to the land use/cover criterion (Fig. 8B), we considered the urban land use, as well as irrigated agricultural areas (wholeyear crops) and pine forest, to be the areas of highest vulnerability level (value 4). Areas

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Fig. 5 Highway length per municipality

with rain-feed agriculture, oak forest, mountain-cloud forest, and grassland with cattle use, were considered as class 3, or high-vulnerability areas. Fir and Juniper forest, as well as grasslands (without evidence of cattle use) were regarded as areas with moderate vulnerability (class 2). Last, we dened areas of low cattle-raising or agricultural value, including areas devoid of vegetation, alpine or high-mountain grasslands and cattail-sedge wetland areas as the less vulnerable areas, corresponding to class 1. The infrastructure vulnerability map (Fig. 8C) was built by integrating the information on the number of health-care units, the number of schools and highway length per municipality; then assigning a weight with respect to interval found in each case, based on the minimum and maximum values. The weight of each variable was added for each municipality, resulting in a new reclassication into four categories. In this way we obtained a vulnerability level per municipality. As for the vulnerability of municipalities based on health-care units, we found that most of the municipalities have between 15 and 50 health-care units; so we assigned the highest vulnerability (value 4) to those municipalities with more than 50 health-care units; a high vulnerability (value 3) to municipalities with between 16 and 50 health-care units; a moderate vulnerability (value 2) to municipalities with between 5 and 15 health-care units; and a low vulnerability (value 1) to those with less than ve units. Vulnerability values based on the number of schools were assigned as follows: the most vulnerable municipalities (class 4) are those with more than 250 schools; high vulnerability (class 3) include those with between 51 and 250 schools; class 2, or moderate vulnerability,

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Fig. 6 Number of schools per municipality

include municipalities with ten to 50 schools; and the less vulnerable municipalities (class 1) are those with less than ten schools. Values derived according to the highway length were established giving a value of 4 to the most vulnerable municipalities with more than 200 km of highways, a high vulnerability (class 3) to those with lengths between 101 km and 200 km; moderate vulnerability, to those with between 50 km and 100 km (class 2); and the less vulnerable ones (class 1) are those municipalities with less than 50 km of highways. Vulnerability values based on infrastructure were obtained adding the weights of the three variables and classifying them in the following way: municipalities with a very high vulnerability, those with values above 10; high vulnerability, municipalities with values between 8 and 9; moderate vulnerability, those with values between 5 and 7; and with the lowest vulnerability, those municipalities with values between 3 and 4. The map of vulnerability by economic units (Fig. 8D) was made based on the gross total product for each municipality, in thousands of pesos. The following were regarded as the most suitable values to establish vulnerability: class 4, municipalities with a gross production exceeding 500 million pesos per year; municipalities with a high vulnerability, those with a production between 101 and 500 million pesos; with a moderate vulnerability, if the gross production lies between 10 and 100 million pesos; and class 1, or low vulnerability, municipalities with a product lower than 10 million pesos.

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Fig. 7 Number of medical units per municipality

The vulnerability maps and the total vulnerability map (Fig. 9) show that the Toluca municipality always has the highest vulnerability levels, demonstrating that from the population, infrastructure and economic production perspectives, it represents the most vulnerable area for concentrating a high population density, the major part of services and an important industrial plant. After Toluca, the municipalities of Zinacantepec, Tianguistenco, Lerma, San Mateo Atenco and Calpulhuac are classied as vulnerable, for being industrial centers that have been growing steadily around Toluca. Last, the total vulnerability map was completed following the Multi-Criteria method in IDRISI and applying the pairwise comparison matrix, where the four criteria-maps were compared and weighed with each other (Table 2). By using semi-subjective judgments of value, land use and vegetation was considered as slightly less important than total population, and was given a weight of 1/3 according to the scale previously established (Fig. 2). Infrastructure was deemed moderately less important than population, assigning a weight of 1/5 to it, while in the comparison between economic units and population the former were far less important, with a weight of 1/7. Then, infrastructure was compared to land use/cover, and the former was dened as slightly less important, with a weight of 1/3, whereas a value of 1/ 5 was assigned for the comparison between economic units and land use, denoting that the former are moderately less important. In the last comparison between economic units and infrastructure, the former were regarded as slightly less important, assigning value of 1/3 to them.

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Fig. 8 Vulnerability maps. (A) Vulnerability of total population; (B) Vulnerability of land use/cover; (C) Vulnerability of infrastructure; (D) Vulnerability of economic units

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Fig. 9 Map of total vulnerability

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Table 2 Pairwise comparison matrix and relative weights criteria to estimate vulnerability in the volcanic hazard evaluation Criteria Total population Land use/cover Infrastructure Economic units Total Total population 1 1/3 1/5 1/7 Land use/cover Infrastructure Economic units Criterion weight 0.5604 0.2605 0.1276 0.0516 1.0000

1 1/3 1/5

1 1/3

Conclusions This study is a rst step towards a more comprehensive research about vulnerability assessment as input to determine volcanic risk evaluation in one of the highest volcanoes in Mexico. The methodology applied here is a real alternative to a scarce and of low spatial resolution information and for a rapid and concise short-, mid- and long-term analysis, in the decision-making process and in the construction of risk-prevention maps. One of the most important value in the use and application of the GIS tools lies in that they constitute a distinctive information integration and management system that allows to gather, concentrate, analyze, represent and facilitate the management and interpretation (qualitative and quantitative) of spatial and attribute information in a far more effective, rapid and integrated way. Additionally, it makes good use of the enormous capacity of spatial technology in a single work environment for the fusion and review of various information layers, extraction of relevant data and ongoing information updating to enrich the system, compared to other types of manual methodologies and traditional mapinterpretation techniques used before. Such advantages allow us to handle several scenarios and generate cartography during the planning stage, before any decision is made on actions to take. In the short-term, in the event of an imminent eruption, the most vulnerable areas requiring immediate support are identied. In the long-term, when information and awareness programs are established among the population, it allows the implementation of simulated contingencies, land-use planning and appropriate resource management. Regarding the application of the Multi-Criteria assessment techniques, the advantage of this methodology integrated in GIS as relatively common tools for a number of investigations like the reported here is worth mentioning, where there are several factors and variables inuencing in the occurrence of a given fact, phenomenon or objective, and there are several points of view in the decision-making process. Furthermore, these allow us to handle the assessment in a quantitative way, providing us a greater real-world approximation validity and less subjectivity in the analysis and selection of criteria. As regards, selection and assessment of criteria and their weights, it can be stated that eliminating subjectivity of persons in charge of these aspects is highly difcult; however, the application of these kinds of methodologies involves a high degree of semi-subjectivity, that is, they include criteria and ideas based on experience, as well as applications developed by experts in volcanology and in the study and management of volcanic risks and disasters, and that are published in thesis, journal papers, books and reports, or that may be obtained from a personal or impersonal opinion poll among those experts, which provide weight assign and results with a certainly and veracity. The methodology might be strongly reinforced through the formation of a discussion group including experts, decision-makers

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(government agencies) to analyze weight assign and gather their opinion to make nal adjustments to these weights. Another important reason for using Multi-Criteria techniques is that they make possible to assess all criteria simultaneously, with no need to carry out several map-overlaying operations, modifying value attributes using a constant value, and making a nal map reclassication resulting from the combination of all criteria layers. In the Valley of Toluca, the highest-vulnerability areas are concentrated in those areas that have been affected by all previous eruptions, coinciding with areas that have a great concentration of population, industry and high-value agricultural lands (irrigated, in this case). The Municipality of Toluca stands out over the other municipalities, indicating an important bias in terms of vulnerability, representing an anomaly found in this study derived from handling information at a municipality level. This anomaly will be corroborated further in a subsequent phase of this study where information will be handled at a ner scale, that is, at a locality level, both in urban and rural areas, and by obtaining a more complete and detailed cartographic database and using aerial photographs.

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