Contrasting risk perception and technical hazard assessment: insights from social cartography in Monterrey

Abstract

This article analyzes the usefulness of social cartography as a community tool for understanding risk perception in two neighborhoods of the Campana-Altamira district and two of the distritotec area in Monterrey, Mexico. The research is structured in six sections: introduction, conceptual review, territorial context, methodology, results, discussion, and conclusions. A qualitative approach was employed, including neighborhood workshops, field visits, semi-structured interviews, and collective mapping sessions carried out between May and September 2023. The findings reveal differences in social cohesion, neighborhood organization, and levels of socio-environmental vulnerability, all of which directly affect risk perception and local response capacity. The process included community validation exercises and technical validation based on the authors’ construction of thematic maps to identify existing threats, using official data sources and field observations. This dual perspective allowed for a contrast between community perceptions and scientific evidence. The study concludes that social cartography helped make risks and local capacities visible from the community's perspective, generating valuable inputs for participatory urban management and offering transferable lessons for other contexts across the Global South.