"Flooding is the most frequent hazard in our communities."

This was a statement issued by the Executive Director of the Caribbean Development Emergency Management Agency (CDEMA), Mr. Jeremy Collymore, at the Opening Ceremony of a regional workshop held yesterday in Barbados. The Opening Ceremony marked the start of a series of one-day workshops hosted by the CARICOM Regional Organisation for Standards and Quality (CROSQ), aimed at providing participants with an opportunity to use and apply modern Flood Hazard Mapping and Rainfall Intensity Duration Frequency (IDF) Curves technologies.

Chief Executive Officer of CROSQ, Dr. Vyjayanthi Lopez, remarked that the workshops are one of the activities under a project being implemented by CROSQ, and funded by the Caribbean Development Bank (CDB), to develop Regional Building Standards (RBS) for the Caribbean, in order to provide an updated and comprehensive set of building standards facilitating the safer and more efficient design of buildings in the region.

On March 17 and 18, during a series of workshops being hosted by the CARICOM Regional Organisation for Standards and Quality (CROSQ) in collaboration with the Antigua and Barbuda Bureau of Standards (ABBS), Small and Medium-sized Enterprise (SME) owners in Antigua and Barbuda will be exposed to five CARICOM standards, namely:

• CARICOM Regional Standard Specification for Labelling of pre-packaged foods;
• CARICOM Regional Code of Practice General Principles – Food hygiene
• CARICOM Regional Standard Specification for pre-packaged water;
• CARICOM Regional Code of Practice for pre-packaged water; and
• CARICOM Regional Standard Specification for grading of agricultural produce – Part 7: Pineapples.

These workshops are one of the activities being undertaken under a project being implemented by CROSQ, and funded by the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB), to improve market access and competitiveness for SMEs. The standards to be discussed are 5 of a total of 34 normative documents (standards and codes of practices) being developed under the project.

The CARICOM Regional Organisation for Standards and Quality (CROSQ), in collaboration with the Trinidad and Tobago Bureau of Standards (TTBS) and with the technical and financial support of Tradecom¹, hosted a workshop entitled “Calibration of weighing instruments according to SIM MWG7/cg-01/v.00” from 22-25 February 2010.

The workshop was held at the TTBS office in Trinidad and was aimed at providing metrologists with the theoretical and practical knowledge in the area of calibration of weighing instruments that could assist the National Standards Bodies (NSBs) with improving their existing service or setting up a new service for calibration of weighing instruments. The workshop was facilitated by Mr. Luis Omar Becerra from Centro Nacional de Metrologia (CENAM), Mexico and Mr. Jorge Nava (Consultant) of Mexico.

"With an official death toll of 230,000 and thousands still buried beneath collapsed structures, the Haiti earthquake of 12 January was more than twice as lethal as any previous magnitude-7.0 event."

The recent earthquakes in Haiti and Chile have raised awareness of the importance of Building Standards and Codes in the face of natural hazards.

On February 11, Mr. Roger Bilham, one of the first seismologists to visit Haiti after the earthquake in January 2010, highlighted the fact that Haiti’s ruined buildings show clear signs of poor engineering. He noted “Every possible mistake was evident: brittle steel, coarse non-angular aggregate, weak cement mixed with dirty or salty sand, and the widespread termination of steel reinforcement rods at the joints between columns and floors of buildings where earthquake stresses are highest.”