Urban Risk Reduction Approaches in Bangladesh

2013 ◽  
pp. 235-257 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gulsan Ara Parvin ◽  
S. M. Reazul Ahsan ◽  
Rajib Shaw
Keyword(s):  
Risk Reduction ◽  
Urban Risk

Citizens of Delhi lead resilience action

2019 ◽  
Vol 28 (1) ◽  
pp. 69-75
Author(s):  
Manu Gupta ◽  
Parag Talankar ◽  
Shivangi Chavda
Keyword(s):  
Risk Reduction ◽  
Urban Areas ◽  
Urban Poor ◽  
Team Building ◽  
Disaster Risk ◽  
Risk Governance ◽  
Content Type ◽  
Agents Of Change ◽  
High Investment ◽  
Urban Risk

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to illustrate practical approaches to addressing issues of risk reduction and disaster prevention in urban areas. In addition to exposure to natural hazards, urban areas represent complex risks and vulnerabilities together with complicated governance structures. Design/methodology/approach To address the challenge, SEEDS mobilised a “Disaster Watch Forum” – a citizens’ platform that brought citizens together to proactively engage with the local government. With hand-holding support from SEEDS, training by domain experts, internal team building and the forum has become a credible people-based institution addressing issues of risk reduction and prevention. Findings Urban risk reduction has remained a challenging issue with solutions often sought in high investment structural interventions. These have limited impact on the urban poor living in informal areas. This paper reveals “bottom-up” people-based approach that is able to engage with the “system” from “outside”. It reveals how people relate to day-to-day risks that affect their lives, making it the stepping stone to address higher order societal risks. Finally, the immense power and energy of youth and children work as local “agents of change”. Overall, the work aligns with priorities of the Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction. Research limitations/implications There are three principal implications for further research: with half the world now urbanized, urgent solutions are needed for improving disaster risk governance in cities; taking a “whole of society” approach in addressing a wider canvas of risks; and redirecting investments in urban areas towards managing risks, rather than managing disasters. Practical implications The model illustrated is replicable in urban areas facing risk. It worked well in a population catchment of 50,000 residents; to achieve scale would require enabling a federated structure of several localised forums. Originality/value The paper presents a hands-on experience in building an alternative approach to urban risk reduction. It has required authors to move from “government to governance” model making citizens active stakeholders in proactively addressing their own underlying vulnerabilities that lead to creation of and exacerbation of risks.

scholarly journals A continuum of perceived urban risk – from the Gorkha earthquake to economic insecurity

2018 ◽  
Vol 30 (1) ◽  
pp. 317-332 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hanna A Ruszczyk
Keyword(s):  
Risk Reduction ◽  
Disaster Risk Reduction ◽  
Local Level ◽  
Disaster Risk ◽  
Poor Quality ◽  
Economic Insecurity ◽  
Gorkha Earthquake ◽  
Full Spectrum ◽  
Urban South ◽  
Urban Risk

Global discussions of risk in the disaster risk reduction literature do not necessarily reflect the range of risk as understood by residents in the urban South. This intra-urban comparison from Bharatpur, Nepal, where the Gorkha earthquake struck in 2015, shows how residents in two different wards perceive risks related to themselves, their families and their urban environment. The continuum of perceived urban risk includes events such as the Gorkha earthquake and the administrative change, as well as everyday concerns such as poor quality of infrastructure provision and economic insecurity. By contrasting the views of these residents of an “ordinary” city in the urban South, and comparing them also with the views of the local authority, this paper allows for an enriched understanding of how risk is understood, highlighting the breadth of concerns involved, and the tensions in understandings of the full spectrum of urban risk. Understandings and definitions of risk matter. If perceptions of risk from the local level are not included within the broader disaster risk reduction discourse, this shapes and in effect limits the risks that are actually managed through policy and practice.

Financing the resilient city

2012 ◽  
Vol 24 (1) ◽  
pp. 215-232 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jeb Brugmann
Keyword(s):  
Risk Reduction ◽  
Urban Design ◽  
Urban Areas ◽  
Local Governments ◽  
Private Investment ◽  
Business Logic ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
Risk Reduction Measures ◽  
Urban Risk ◽  
Urban Adaptation

This paper presents a strategy for scaling climate change adaptation within urban areas. The strategy specifically focuses on the requirements for mobilizing large amounts of capital for adaptation and other urban risk reduction above and beyond the amounts that will likely be mobilized through new international adaptation funds. The paper, based on a report published by ICLEI–Local Governments for Sustainability,( 1 ) proposes a re-framing of the urban adaptation and disaster reduction challenge. The approach shifts the adaptation focus from risk reduction as a primary end in itself to a broader development focus on financing the performance of urban assets, areas and/or systems. This emphasis is elaborated through the concept of “resilience”, an urban design and investment metric that measures the ability of urban areas and their individual assets to perform for users and their investors under a wide range of conditions. The paper argues that such a performance-oriented approach provides a business logic that can attract conventional, private investment flows to climate and disaster risk reduction measures and thereby “mainstream” them.

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