Cities, Disaster Risk and Adaptation

Christine Wamsler

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2014
• eBook ISBN:
  9781134615025
• Topic: Architecture
• Subtopic: City Planning & Urban Development

Worldwide, disasters and climate change pose a serious risk to sustainable urban development, resulting in escalating human and economic costs. Consequently, city authorities and other urban actors face the challenge of integrating risk reduction and adaptation strategies into their work. However, related knowledge and expertise are still scarce and fragmented.

Cities, Disaster Risk and Adaptation explores ways in which resilient cities can be 'built' and sustainable urban transformations achieved. The book provides a comprehensive understanding of urban risk reduction and adaptation planning, exploring key theoretical concepts and analysing the complex interrelations between cities, disasters and climate change. Furthermore, it provides an overview of current risk reduction and adaptation approaches taken by both city authorities and city dwellers from diverse contexts in low, middle and high income nations. Finally, the book offers a planning framework for reducing and adapting to risk in urban areas by expanding on pre-existing positive actions and addressing current shortfalls in theory and practice. The importance of a distributed urban governance system, in which institutions' and citizens' adaptive capacities can support and complement each other, is highlighted.

This book takes a holistic approach; it integrates perspectives and practice from risk reduction and climate change adaptation based on a specific urban viewpoint. The text is richly supplemented with boxed case studies written by renowned academics and practitioners in the field and 'test yourself' scenarios that integrate theory into practice. Each chapter contains learning objectives, end of chapter questions, suggested further reading and web resources, as well as a wealth of tables and figures. This book is essential reading for undergraduate and postgraduate students of geography, urban studies and planning, architecture, environmental studies, international development, sociology and sustainability studies.

Part 1: Theoretical framework

2Sorting out the conceptual ‘jungle’ associated with urban risk reduction and adaptation

Learning objectives

•To gain an overview of key concepts and terms central to the understanding of urban disaster risk management, risk reduction and climate change adaptation

○To identify what constitutes urban risk in conceptual terms

○To identify the conceptual characteristics of disaster-resilient cities

•To become acquainted with a conceptual and operational framework for mainstreaming risk reduction and adaptation into urban planning practice.

The worldwide increase in urban disasters makes the constant struggle and failure of city authorities and other urban actors all too visible. Improved knowledge and capacity on conceptual and operational frameworks to better address this situation are crucial. But what are the concepts and terms city authorities and planners need to be familiar with when dealing with disasters and planning for risk reduction and adaptation? Unfortunately, there is no short answer to this question. Even the most simplistic and popular documentaries and publications on these issues confront the audience with an overwhelmingly large number of different concepts. This conceptual ‘jungle’ includes terms such as risk, vulnerability, hazard, prevention, mitigation, preparedness, reconstruction, resilience, sustainable transformation and many more (Figure 2.1). Too often these concepts are used without further explanation. Whilst there are no universally accepted definitions of these terms, being able to interrelate them in a coherent way is crucial in order, ultimately, to ‘construct’ a framework that can guide the comprehensive management of increasing urban disasters and changing risk patterns in practice. So how can we find our way through the existing conceptual jungle and make sense of its many different terms?

Figure 2.1 Word cloud presenting the conceptual ‘jungle’ associated with urban risk reduction and adaptation.

Source: graphic created in Wordle.net.

Different answers are possible and depend on the definition of each concept. The answer presented in the following sections is considered the most suitable for city authorities and other urban actors because it provides a coherent conceptual framework for reducing and adapting to risk in urban areas, which furthermore can be easily operationalized.¹

In simple terms, the key concepts and their interrelation can be summarized as follows. There are three main processes of disaster risk management, namely (1) disaster response, (2) disaster recovery and (3) disaster risk reduction (see Table 2.1, last column, bold terms). The third process, disaster risk reduction, is closely related to climate change adaptation. Both processes share the aim of increasing disaster resilience by reducing the number and impacts of climate-related disasters and associated risk, which includes climatic extremes and variability (see Boxes 1.2–1.3). The concepts of disaster, disaster risk and resilience can thus be seen as the conceptual basis that underlies urban risk reduction and adaptation (see Boxes 1.1 and 1.4 and Table 2.1, first column, bold terms). Risk reduction and adaptation include five main activities, namely (1) hazard reduction and avoidance, (2) vulnerability reduction, (3) preparedness for response, (4) preparedness for recovery and (5) risk assessment (see Table 2.1, second column, bold terms). If people at risk take measures on their own to reduce or adapt to disasters and risk, they are generally called coping strategies (see Table 2.1, second column, bold terms). Risk assessment provides the knowledge base for the identification, design and implementation of the risk reduction and adaptation measures (1)–(4). With both risk reduction and adaptation being so-called cross-cutting or mainstreaming issues, these activities need to be integrated into the context of (a) disaster response, (b) disaster recovery and (c) development work (see Table 2.1, second and third column, bold terms).

Table 2.1 Categorization of key terms and concepts central to the understanding of disaster risk management, risk reduction and climate change adaptation

Underlying basic concepts	Measures and activities	Processes and working fields
Disaster Complex emergency Conflict (Crisis) Disaster risk Climate risk Vulnerability Hazard Climatic extreme Climatic variability Capacity Adaptive capacity Coping capacity Resilience and transformation Disaster resilience Sustainable (urban) transformation	Hazard reduction and avoidance Prevention Hazard reduction Hazard avoidance Climate change mitigation Vulnerability reduction Disaster mitigation Preparedness for response Contingency planning Evacuation planning Preparedness for recovery Risk financing Risk transfer Risk sharing Risk assessment Risk analysis Risk evaluation Coping strategies Individual practice for risk reduction Private adaptation Autonomous adaptation Adaptive behaviour Mainstreaming Different strategies (Boxes 2.8–2.10)	Disaster response Response Humanitarian assistance Emergency management (Disaster) relief (Disaster) rescue Disaster recovery Recovery Reconstruction Rehabilitation Early recovery Disaster risk reduction Risk reduction Climate change adaptation Development work Technical cooperation Technical assistance

The conceptual framework just described shows that it is helpful to be able to differentiate between processes, measures and activities associated with urban risk reduction and adaptation, and the related underlying concepts (Table 2.1). As a first step, these aspects can be used to make sense of the many different terms presented in Figure 2.1:

1.The basic concepts that underlie both the processes and related measures of risk reduction and adaptation. These not only refer to the key concepts of disaster, disaster risk and disaster resilience mentioned previously, but also include other concepts such as complex emergencies, conflict, crisis, climate risk, vulnerability, hazard, climatic extremes and variability, coping capacity and adaptive capacity (see Table 2.1, first column).

2.Existing measures and activities that can be employed within the context of risk reduction and adaptation. Apart from the previously mentioned concepts of hazard reduction and avoidance, vulnerability reduction, preparedness for response, preparedness for recovery, risk assessment, coping strategies and mainstreaming, this category also includes other concepts such as prevention, mitigation, contingency and evacuation planning, risk financing, risk transfer and sharing, risk analysis and evaluation, private or autonomous adaptation and adaptive behaviour (see Table 2.1, second column).

3.Existing processes or working fields of disaster risk management and, more specifically, urban risk reduction and adaptation. Apart from the previously mentioned processes of disaster response, disaster recovery and development work, this category also includes humanitarian assistance, emergency management, disaster relief and rescue, reconstruction, rehabilitation, early recovery, technical cooperation and technical assistance (see Table 2.1, third column).

In order to find our way through the conceptual jungle presented in Figure 2.1, we now need to have a more in-depth look at the terms listed within each category. They can be grouped under umbrella terms. In Table 2.1, these umbrella terms are written in bold and include the other terms listed, which are either subcategories or synonyms. All concepts and their interrelations are described in detail in the following text, starting with the underlying basic concepts, followed by the related measures and processes.

2.1 Basic concepts

A disaster can be defined as ‘a serious disruption of the functioning of a community or a society involving widespread human, material, economic or environmental losses and impacts, which exceeds the ability of the affected community or society to cope using its own resources' (UNISDR 2009: 9; Box 1.1). Disaster risk is the probability or likelihood that such a serious disruption occurs, which is determined by the interaction between so-called natural hazards (H) and vulnerable conditions (V). Disaster risk is thus conventionally expressed in the following pseudo-equation:

where R stands for disaster risk, H for hazard(s) and V for vulnerability.

This pseudo-equation clearly illustrates the fact that hazards do not cause disasters on their own. They are not disasters per se. Rain and floods might, in fact, be a most welcome event for people dependent on shrimp farming in Bangladesh and an earthquake far away from inhabited areas might be of little concern to us. It is only when hazards are combined with vulnerable conditions, such as people and related systems susceptible to the damaging effects of these hazardous events, that risk might become unmanageable. It is only then that haz...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Half Title Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Table of Contents
• List of boxes
• List of figures
• List of tables
• Test yourself scenarios
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction
• Part 1: Theoretical framework
• Part 2: Current practice
• Part 3: Moving forward
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index