Graduate School of Global Environmental Studies, Kyoto University, Kyoto, Japan
Atta-ur-Rahman
Associate Professor, Institute of Geography, Urban and Regional Planning, University of Peshawar, Peshawar, Pakistan
Akhilesh Surjan
Associate Professor, Faculty of Engineering, Health, Science and the Environment, Charles Darwin University, Darwin, Australia
Gulsan Ara Parvin
Researcher, Graduate School of Global Environmental Studies, Kyoto University, Kyoto, Japan
List of Contributors
Vinayak Adane Professor, Department of Architecture and Planning, Visvesvaraya National Institute of Technology, Nagpur, India
Reazul Ahsan Research Fellow, MIT-UTM Sustainable Cities Program, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA, USA
Mohammad Shakil Akther Professor, Department of Urban and Regional Planning, Bangladesh University of Engineering and Technology, Dhaka, Bangladesh
Atta-ur-Rahman Associate Professor, Institute of Geography, Urban and Regional Planning, University of Peshawar, Peshawar, Pakistan
Michiko Banba Education and Research Center for Disaster Education, University of Hyogo, Japan
Uttama Barua Graduate Student, Department of Urban and Regional Planning, Bangladesh University of Engineering and Technology and Research Planner, Bangladesh Network Office for Urban Safety (BNUS), Bangladesh University of Engineering and Technology, Dhaka, Bangladesh
Ranit Chatterjee Graduate School of Global Environmental Studies, Kyoto University, Kyoto, Japan
Priya Choudhary Smt. Manoramabai Mundle College of Architecture, Seminary Hills, Maharashtra, India
Sameer Deshkar Assistant Professor, Department of Architecture and Planning, Visvesvaraya National Institute of Technology, Nagpur, India
Glenn Fernandez Disaster Risk Management Systems, Asian Disaster Preparedness Center, Bangkok, Thailand
Ishrat Islam Professor, Department of Urban and Regional Planning, Bangladesh University of Engineering and Technology, Dhaka, Bangladesh
Nafesa Ismail Graduate School of Global Environmental Studies, Kyoto University, Kyoto, Japan
Sadasivam Karuppannan University of South Australia, Australia
Jon Kellett University of Adelaide, Adelaide, Australia
Huy Nguyen Institute for Social and Environmental Transition, Vietnam
Kenji Okazaki Professor, Kyoto University, Japan
Gulsan Ara Parvin Researcher, Graduate School of Global Environmental Studies, Kyoto University, Kyoto, Japan
Krishna S. Pribadi Professor, Bandung Institute of Technology, Indonesia
Bhaswati Ray Assistant Professor, Sivanath Sastri College, Kolkata, India
Rajib Shaw Professor, Graduate School of Global Environmental Studies, Kyoto University, Kyoto, Japan
Kazi Farzana Shumi Department of Business Administration (DBA), International Islamic University Chittagong (IIUC), Dhaka, Bangladesh
Nitin Srivastava Graduate School of Global Environmental Studies, Kyoto University, Kyoto, Japan
Akhilesh Surjan Associate Professor, Faculty of Engineering, Health, Science and the Environment, Charles Darwin University, Darwin, Australia
Phong Tran Institute for Social and Environmental Transition, Vietnam
Tho Tran Graduate School of Global Environmental Studies, Kyoto University, Kyoto, Japan
Preface
Globally, the intensity and frequency of disasters are on the rise. In urban areas, more than 50% of the world’s population is living on just 2% of the land surface. Most of these cities are located in Asia, which consists mostly of developing nations. In these cities, more than 30% of the residents are living in slums and squatters. Unforeseen disaster events hit cities and communities in both the developing and developed world, but developing nations are more vulnerable and suffer more intensely. Numerous cities have been affected by natural and human-created disasters, with thousands of the inhabitants either buried under debris or washed away by gushing water. Over time, urban disasters put unprecedented pressure on city budgets, which must accommodate emergency response and recovery. Urban centers are the hub of industrial and commercial activity, so cities function to empower their societies. Wherever disasters hit urban areas, their severity brought widespread devastation in terms of human losses and adverse economic consequences and setbacks.
Urban resilience is largely a function of resourceful citizens and governments. The strong and committed involvement of citizens at the grassroots level can lead to a resilient city. There are many factors that affect urban resilience, and no two cities are alike in their inherent capacities. Therefore, building cities that are more resilient to both external and internal negative factors may bring about more productive economic returns. It is important to note that mitigation prior to the occurrence of a disaster is much more effective than picking up the pieces afterward.
This is a very demanding area, which deserves special attention from academia, government institutions, disaster managers, urban authorities, international governmental organizations, scientific community, practitioners, and other experts. It should and will be the focus of policy makers, practitioners working in both the public and private sectors, students, academia, and government officials.
This book particularly highlights several key areas: urban risk, disaster and resilience, building code and land-use planning, coastal cities, urban expansion, urban rural linkages, urban microfinancing, food security, risk communication, and private sector involvement. The text also illustrates some case studies from Asian countries, highlighting experiences from a number of cities.
This book is geared toward a wide audience. Initially, the target group is students, teachers, and researchers working in the fields of urban planning, architecture, disaster preparedness and management, social sciences, and earth and structural sciences. The chapters draw on evidence-based data from the scientific integration of databases and feedback on conceptualization, idea generation, field surveying on urban disasters,
and building city resilience. Similarly, disaster managers, field practitioners, decision makers, disaster-related authorities, and city government staffers are other target readers of this valuable reference.
Rajib Shaw
Atta-ur-Rahman
Akhilesh Surjan
Gulsan Ara Parvin
Mumbai, Beijing, Osaka, Dhaka, Karachi, Calcutta, Istanbul, Chongqing, Manila, and Guangzhou, with populations of over 10 million (UN, 2014). Out of these cities, four are in China, three in India, two in Japan, and one each from Bangladesh, Pakistan, Turkey, and the Philippines. It is urban centers that accelerate the economic growth rate of high-income countries (i.e., Japan, South Korea, China, and Singapore), middle-income countries (i.e., Azerbaijan, India, Iran, and Pakistan) and low-income nations (i.e., Bangladesh, Cambodia, and Kyrgyzstan) (UNHABITAT, 2010).
Figure 1.1 depicts the spatial distribution of the major urban centers in Asia in the year 2000. These cities are growing at an alarming rate, and between 2000–2010, cities in the developing world accounted for a two-thirds increase. During the same period, the population of Karachi, Pakistan, has grown remarkably, by 80%. In these cities, over 37% of urban citizens are living in slums and squatter developments. As a consequence, the intensity and occurrences of urban disasters has increased, and as a result the urban authorities have been hard-pressed to cope with and build urban resilience to these events. The analysis presented here shows that urban resilience is largely a function of resilient and resourceful citizens. The strong and committed involvement of citizens at the grass-roots level may lead to cities that can withstand and react well to disasters. In the scientific research that is currently available, city resilience is considered as the capability of an established system to cope with and withstand the impact of a major disaster and recover quickly to normal city functioning. However, resilience largely varies from city to city and study to study, depending on the use and application of resilience methods. Similarly, vulnerability and exposure to such events also vary from city to city. Some cities are extremely vulnerable to coastal hazards, like Mumbai, Shanghai, Karachi, Chennai, Chittagong, Yangon, Ho Chi Minh City, Osaka, Singapore, and Semarang. The urban agglomerations in the Bohai Bay area (China), the Ganges-Brahmaputra deltaic region (Bangladesh), the Indus river delta (Pakistan), the Yangtze River delta (China) and the Pearl River delta region (China) are exposed to various coastal hazards. Some Asian cities are exposed to river flooding, like Dhaka, Delhi, Bangkok, Lahore, and Bandung. Several cities in India, the Philippines, Vietnam, Bangladesh, Pakistan, Myanmar, and China are frequently exposed to violent storms. Earthquakes are another type of devastating event, to which many cities in Japan, Indonesia, China, India, Pakistan, Iran, Bangladesh, Vietnam, and Thailand are comparatively more vulnerable.
It has been observed that developing cities generally spend only a small fraction of their budgets on disaster preparedness. Such limited investment in urban resilience can lead to massive damage after catastrophic events occur. Experience has shown that even a small investment in urban risk reduction is much more effective than picking up the pieces after a disaster (Rahman & Shaw, 2015). As cities are the hubs of commercial, industrial, and social activities, they contain large numbers of people in zones of great population density. They also act as engines for national economic growth and prosperity. It is cities that empower societies, and hence it is important to give them the attention they need in order to withstand disastrous events. The resilient capability of a city varies from location to location, and for this reason, increasing resilience is mainly a function of a city’s resilient and resourceful citizens. The committed and effective participation of city dwellers at the community level, and effectively addressing both internal and external negative factors, may yield productive and resilient cities.
Figure 1.1 Distribution of Asian cities, 2000.
It has been observed that the committed and powerful involvement of residents at the community and local government levels may lead to a resilient city. However, there are numerous determining factors that influence city resilience. The research literature reveals that no two cities are alike in their inherent resilience capacities and coping mechanisms. It is because of this fact that enhancing city resilience to internal and external adverse factors may lead to more productive economic returns (Rahman & Shaw, 2015).
1.4 Why Inclusive Urban Resilience?
UNISDR (2007) stated that the role of women in disasters is not merely as victims, but rather as active stakeholders in DRR planning. The one UN program that concerns disaster preparation has focused on the need for increasing community resilience in response to disasters, climate change, temporary relocated persons, humanitarian assistance, disease transmission, and gender equality (UN, 2009). Recent DRR strategies have stressed inclusive and sensitive sustainable planning and development. The vulnerable group has low resilience capacity and needs more attention at all levels. In developing countries, majority of women are housewives, who are primarily responsible for household activities including cooking, washing, cleaning, child care, and care of elderly or disabled persons (Samiullah et al., 2015) and have limited access to disaster response. Sudden misfortune increases women’s vulnerabilities and complicates their duties as heads of household. Scientific studies reveal that in most of these countries, women generally are less educated, low capacity, and have limited access to resources and knowledge about disasters and climate change, low awareness of their rights, limited exposure to external environment, and few life skills. These are the determining factors that make women extremely vulnerable during any extreme event.
In gender-sensitive risk reduction strategies, women have the capacity to cope with disaster events and work as activists in search and rescue activity. Similarly, most often immediately during disasters, women are devoted to taking care of their household belongings and the preservation of valuable properties. Disabled people, children, the elderly, and pregnant women need special care and sometimes have difficulty finding and getting to shelters. In the developing countries of Asia, women have very low disaster and climate change education, and therefore, they cannot take a proactive approach to functioning in all three (pre, during and post) phases of disaster. For instance, during the earthquake that hit Kashmir, Pakistan, in 2005, numerous cases of harassment of women, child kidnapping, and sexual abuse were the result of negligence on the part of both government functions and the local community (Samiullah et al., 2015).
It is very important to realize that urban authorities need to prepare city disaster risk management plans to enhance disaster resilience and multihazard early warning and mapping. Men and women must work together to recover from the impact of a disaster. Generally, women are predominantly seen as helpless in these societies, and recently, attempts have been made to involve vulnerable groups (including women) in the decision-making process. The empowerment of women is an
important element of increasing their role in mentoring, management, leadership, and policy formulation (Samiullah et al., 2015). Mainstreaming vulnerable group in risk assessment process and disaster management is very effective, and leads to better decision making and implementing programs at the institutional, community and regional levels. In gender-specific planning, the emphasis remains on taking particular care of marginalized and vulnerable groups, such as women, children, the disabled, and the elderly, to ensure that they receive sufficient attention during emergencies (Samiullah et al., 2015).
1.5
Approaches to Urban Resilience
Globally, in DRR efforts, a paradigm shift was noted after the Indian Ocean tsunami in 2004. The UNISDR, international organizations, and the countries in this area of the world quickly adopted initiatives for legislative and policy actions at the national, regional, and community levels for DRR. The same landmark development was addressed in the HFA 2005–2015 declaration with five priority areas for DRR. The gradual introduction of innovative techniques and approaches was involved, including an attempt to shift from reactive to proactive approaches, with specific attention paid to hazard identification, preparedness, mitigation, enhancing community resilience, capacity development, early warning, emergency response, and early recovery. As a result, disaster awareness, coping mechanisms, and endorsement of urban risk reduction strategies in planning and development have increased.
The HFA insisted that nations incorporate DRR into their urban risk reduction plans. In Asia, almost all nations have taken initiatives toward policy formulation, legislation, establishment of disaster management mechanisms, institutionalization of organizations, and disaster risk management planning at the national, regional, and community levels, and the focus has changed from reactive to proactive DRR approaches. The governments of Japan, China, South Korea, the Philippines, Vietnam, Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, India, Pakistan, Nepal, and other nations have strengthened their resilience to disasters by implementing risk management legislation, establishing appropriate institutions, implementing mitigation, risk assessment, preparedness, forecasting and early warning systems, mechanisms for emergency response, early recovery, and disaster and climate change education in order to minimize the underlying risk factors. Nevertheless, the key urban risk reduction strategies include land-use planning, protecting critical structures, prohibiting specific urban functions in incompatible areas, reducing pollution, protecting the environment, controlling emissions, enforcing building bylaws, and creating early warning and emergency response systems (Rahman & Shaw, 2015). Such innovative and proactive urban risk reduction strategies have been shown to be effective in handling urban risks. Climate-related urban disasters are gaining attention due to their increasing occurrence, and urban authorities need to properly endorse DRR in their city planning and development processes.
In Asia, almost every country has only a few major cities and many medium-sized and small urban centers. In addition to the megacities, governments should take into
awareness and response capacity. As a disaster preparedness strategy, the establishment of a stock repository may further improve a city’s ability to recover quickly from a disaster and will help its government have sufficient supplies for emergency relief and rehabilitation. Therefore, urban authorities must create and strengthen warehouses and stockpiling mechanisms for storing food, medicine, relief items, shelters, and rescue equipment (Rahman & Shaw, 2015).
In Asian cities, the frequency and intensity of disastrous events and climate change exacerbations are on the rise, both in terms of fatalities and property loss. In these urban centers, effective disaster forecasting and timely dissemination of warnings are either entirely lacking or minimal (done by only a few major cities). In disaster preparedness, forecasting and early dissemination of warnings to a community about to experience a natural disaster is the primary responsibility of concerned government agency in conjunction with the city government. All urban governments that lack forecasting and early warning systems, need to formulate strategies to establish effective forecasting and timely warning of citizens in high-risk areas and prepare emergency response plans and early recovery for all urban sectors.
In general, emergency response systems in Asian cities are either completely lacking or have insufficient capacity to withstand and respond effectively to disaster situations. Therefore, the establishment of rapid response teams and mechanisms can help in minimizing the impacts of unforeseen events in these communities. In Pakistan, the National Disaster Management Act (NDMA) of 2010 has especially endorsed the importance of having emergency response systems at both the city and community levels. In this regard, the NDMA has formulated a national disaster response plan to respond effectively to disaster situations ( Rahman & Shaw, 2015 ). However, the capacity of existing response systems is very limited. The national disaster response mechanism is required for undertaking search and rescue efforts in urban areas. This calls on city governments to build city resilience through the establishment of emergency response systems at all levels. However, priority needs to be given to creating emergency operation centers, civil defense divisions, and urban search-and-rescue teams in all urban centers ( Rahman & Shaw, 2015 ).
1.5.4 Urban Floodproofing
Worldwide, there is an increasing trend of urban flooding, with resultant damage, due to climate change. In Asia, however, very few cities thus far have developed urban floodproofing and flood management plans, and much still has to be done by city governments. In intense rainfall conditions, the existing drainage system fails to accommodate access water, and as a result, the water overflows, inundating urban services and structures. Similarly, urban floodproofing and management through guided head spurs, marginal embankments, levees, the prohibition of encroachment onto the flood channels, chocking of drainage systems, flood forecasting, and early warning and flood defense systems need to be properly incorporated into urban development planning.
1.5.5 Earthquake Risk Reduction
In an urban environment, effective mainstreaming of DRR and understanding urban scenarios, risk profiles, and trends of industrialization and urbanization are essential (Sharma et al., 2011). Asia is one of the world’s most seismically active regions, and almost all of its megacities are vulnerable to the risk of earthquakes and placed from high to minor area. Over the past two decades, the region has experienced several episodes of high-intensity earthquakes, with thousands of human casualties. The urban areas have incurred the heaviest amount of casualties and property damage. The past decade has seen a number of such tragedies, including the 2005 Pakistan earthquake, with over 70,000 fatalities; an earthquake in Lushan, China, in 2013, which caused economic losses of $14 billion and 196 deaths; and an earthquake in Pakistan, which killed 825 (Caulderwood, 2014). The recent April and May 2015 Nepal earthquakes was devastating with thousands of fatalities. It is, therefore, important to devise strategies for reducing urban seismic risk and build resilience against shocks.
1.5.6 Urban Disaster Management Plans
Keeping in mind the facts mentioned in this chapter up to now, there has been a specific focus on making cities more resilient against unforeseen extreme events. The World Bank (2011) specifically highlighted the importance of including proactive approaches for urban risk reduction while devising urban development plans. In addition to increasing urban populations, the situation is further exacerbated by daytime commuters in the urban centers of developing countries. The increasing urbanization poses challenges to urban authorities in extending urban services. Therefore, urban administrations, in consultation with regional disaster management authorities, should prepare disaster management plans that clearly reflect all the stages, including forecasting, creating an early warning system and emergency response mechanisms, capacity building, disaster and climate change education, mitigation, making evacuation plans and early recovery systems, and coordination with government agencies. This will ultimately help in building city resilience and to help them cope with disturbances with minimum human losses and property damage (Campanella, 2006). Such processes, as well as targeted investment in urban risk reduction efforts, can minimize the vulnerabilities of city dwellers. Godschalk (2005) stated emphatically that investment in urban mitigation prior to the fall of a disaster is better than exerting the effort needed to react to a crisis, say, in searching for human bodies and combing through debris to find precious property.
1.5.7 Recovery Planning
Currently, these cities are more resilient than they have been in the past. Cities with a strong economic and political base may recover faster than cities with weak systems and networking. For any urban setup, a fully equipped preparedness plan can enable a city to bounce back after a crisis, with minimal casualties and economic losses.
have hit both the developed and developing world, but it is particularly the cities in the developing world that have low resilience and high vulnerability. In history, numerous cities have been buried by disasters and thousands of inhabitants either buried under debris or washed away by gushing water. Such disastrous events had put unprecedented pressure on city budgets, as cities are the hub of commercial and industrial activities. Whenever any disaster hits a city, its severity remains widespread and the focus of the budget shifts from development to response, recovery, and reconstruction. There is an increasing trend of urban disasters in recent years, and city governments must put their attention on building city resilience to effectively withstand these extreme events.
Chapter 2 focuses on urban risk, the role and responsibility of city government, and the extent of resilience in Asian cities. In the face of uncontrolled and rapid growth, urbanization is considered as one of the major risk factors. It is suspected that MDGs may not be effectively achieved if a city government fails to build a city’s resilience by prioritizing DRR. In this regard, urban scientists frequently emphasize the status of poor urban governance in an attempt to build safer cities and thus to achieve MDGs. Since Asia is the epicenter of the current urbanization surge and highly vulnerable to natural disasters, these risks are particularly highlighted. The chapter also addresses the urban risk and role of city governments to build resilient communities by presenting examples from Dhaka.
Chapter 3 highlights the vulnerabilities of Asian cities in the face of changing climate. Globally, climate change is increasingly being recognized as one of the most serious threats to humanity. Cities occupy the center stage of a dialogue about mitigating the effects of greenhouse gases and adapting to the expected impacts of climate change. Cities in Asia have already witnessed the impacts of climate change–induced disasters such as flooding, water stresses in summer, storm surges and cyclones, heat waves, intense rainfall, and strong typhoons. The chapter also discusses the fact that Asian cities have strong potential to incorporate strategies for reducing impacts of urban disasters by building the resilience of their cities, and elaborates on various strategies to minimize the impacts of urban disasters and combat increasing climate change. These cities should devise innovative risk reduction strategies and create smart and sustainable environments.
Chapter 4 is devoted to discussing how resilient houses makes cities resilient. Globally, the recurrence and devastating impacts of earthquakes are on the rise, and people and houses are densely concentrated in urban areas, where these events can hit the hardest. In earthquake disasters, most deaths and injuries are caused by the total or partial collapse of buildings, particularly houses, most of which are not built by engineers. Further, vulnerable houses block streets when they collapse, which hampers evacuation, relief, and firefighting activities. Thus, resilient houses make their cities resilient as well. The field surveys described in this chapter were conducted in several developing countries, including India, Indonesia, Nepal, and Pakistan. The authors also briefly introduce efforts currently underway in Indonesia to facilitate housing safety in new construction through the appropriate implementation of building codes and dissemination of technical guidebooks.
Chapter 5 describes urban regulations and enforcement, which present a challenge in cities in developing nations. Historically, cities have been built following certain
norms and principles. In Asian cities, however, this process is unique because most of the cities have urban development–related rules and regulations that have not been truly enforced. Institutional weaknesses are often regarded as the main cause of the poor implementation of urban regulations. However, lack of awareness about the existing urban regulations, lack of transparency in the system, poor monitoring mechanisms, financial constraints, and other factors could also be regarded as root causes for poor implementation of urban development norms.
Chapter 6 deals with expanding coastal cities, which pose urban risk. Coastal cities are where a significant percentage of people in Asia live. Historically, coasts have attracted large scale population, and this has been even more the case over the past few decades. Extremely sophisticated and vast infrastructure is being developed in coastal areas of several Asian cities to expand production and trade. This chapter discusses a number of examples concerning coastal cities in Asia, including demographic expansion, trend in urban disasters, prevailing socioeconomic conditions, structure of local governance and its priorities in risk reduction activities, and community engagement in risk reduction. The chapter also discusses recent initiatives in addressing risk in coastal cities.
Chapter 7 analyzes the impact of urban expansion on farmland. Globally, with increasing urbanization and economic growth, the cities are expanding at an alarming pace and multiplying built-up areas in the large urban centers of developing countries. This expansion has modified the way land is used, and in most cases, it has resulted in the reduction of productive agricultural land around the cities, which was once a major source of food for urban residents. The study discussed in this chapter focuses on the impact of urban expansion on farmland in Asian cities, particularly on the city of Peshawar, Pakistan, as a case study. The analysis shows that urban areas have been growing at a very rapid pace in recent years, and in the absence of planning control, there has been tremendous unplanned urban expansion in a leapfrog fashion, encroaching upon the best agricultural land and posing a serious threat to food security and urban air quality as well. However, there is no clear agreement on how to regulate expansion and conserve farmland.
Chapter 8 deals with enhancing city resilience and promoting urban-rural links in Asian cities. Urban communities in developing countries are failing to gather resources to allow them to withstand a shock, while stresses erode resilience and slowly increase the vulnerability of the population. Additionally, a city is resilient only if all its constituents can withstand and recover from the effects of a disaster. Similarly, a region is resilient if it can face the negative consequences of disasters and recover in a minimum period of time. This chapter discusses the interdependency of cities over villages and vice versa and how these urban-rural links can be utilized to build the resilience of cities
Chapter 9 deals with urban DRR in Vietnam, particularly the nation’s gaps, challenges, and approaches. With a combination of urban issues, many communities in cities and peri-urban areas have become increasingly vulnerable to extreme events. DRR efforts in Vietnam to date have primarily focused on rural areas and often employ effective community-based disaster risk management (CBDRM) methods, and yet there is an intensifying need for better DRR approaches in urban contexts. Current
