Reducing Urban Risk to Natural Hazards in the ...

Reducing Urban Risk to Natural Hazards in the Developing World: A Geospatial\Asset-Based Approach

Author: Nate Smith Date: 11/25/2009 Committee Chair: Joe Schilling Virginia Tech Urban Affairs and Planning

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Table of Contents Reducing Urban Risk to Natural Hazards in the Developing World: A Geospatial\Asset-Based Approach.................................................................................. 1 Table of Contents............................................................................................................ 2 Table of Figures .............................................................................................................. 4 Index of Tables ............................................................................................................... 4 Glossary of Terms and Acronyms .................................................................................. 5 Glossary of Terms and Acronyms .................................................................................. 5 Introduction:.................................................................................................................... 9 Background ............................................................................................................... 11 Purpose...................................................................................................................... 12 Scope......................................................................................................................... 12 Intended Audience .................................................................................................... 12 Geospatial Approach................................................................................................. 13 Geospatial Asset Management.................................................................................. 14 Using this Document................................................................................................. 14 Existing Foundations .................................................................................................... 15 Academic - What is a Disaster? ................................................................................ 15 International Frameworks ......................................................................................... 16 Approaches ............................................................................................................... 18 Reducing Urban Risk to Natural Hazards in the Developing World: A Geospatial\Asset-Based Approach................................................................................ 19 I. DEFINE THE SCOPE AND OBJECTIVES............................................................. 20 II. BUILDING A COMMUNITY................................................................................. 21 Inform the Public ...................................................................................................... 22 Listen to the Public ................................................................................................... 23 Engage in Problem Solving ...................................................................................... 24 Develop Agreements................................................................................................. 25 Community Building and Institutionalization .......................................................... 25 III. CREATING A DISASTER PROFILE ................................................................... 25 Global Resources ...................................................................................................... 27 International initiatives ............................................................................................. 29 Regional Resources................................................................................................... 30 Local Resources ........................................................................................................ 31 IV. DELINEATION OF HAZARD AREAS................................................................ 33 V. COMPILATION OF KNOWN VULNERABILITIES AND RESOURCES.......... 34 Define Scope............................................................................................................. 36 Needs Assessment\Requirements Definition............................................................ 36 Discovery .................................................................................................................. 37 Initial Data Collection............................................................................................... 38 Maintenance.............................................................................................................. 38 VI. COMPILATION OF COMMUNITY SOCIAL ASSETS...................................... 39 VII. RISK ANALYSIS ................................................................................................. 40 Hazard Specific Analysis.......................................................................................... 40

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Cumulative Analysis................................................................................................. 40 Detailed Site Analysis............................................................................................... 41 VII. COMMUNICATIONS PLANNING .................................................................... 41 VIII. MAINTENANCE ................................................................................................ 43 IX. CONCLUSIONS .................................................................................................... 43 Annex A – Global Natural Hazard Resources .............................................................. 45 Annex B – Supportive Organizations ........................................................................... 46 Annex C – Information Management Best Practices.................................................... 47 Annex D – Sustainable Geospatial Tools & References .............................................. 48 Annex E – Community Building and Public Participation Resources ......................... 49 Annex F – Population Estimation and Vulnerability Resources .................................. 50 Annex G – Risk Communication Resources ................................................................ 51 Annex H – Geospatial Asset Management Resources.................................................. 52 References..................................................................................................................... 53

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Table of Figures Figure 1: Poor construction practices in rapidly growing areas obscure the true vulnerability of cities in the developing world. This photo from Izmit, Turkey from August of 1999 displays the complete failure of a major building following an earthquake. (Source: Author) ......................... 9 Figure 2: Geospatial tools used by USAID’s Famine Early Warning System Network to communicate food security situations. (www.fews.net)................................................................ 27 Figure 3: This graphic provides a representation of the Global Hotspots data for a portion of the U.S. Coast that is highly vulnerable to tropical cyclones. Source: Earth Institute, Columbia University ...................................................................................................................................... 29 Figure 4: The CRED\GRIP DisDat Portal provides quick access to disaster databases from around the world. ( www.disdat.be/) ............................................................................................. 31 Figure 5: Despite being the poorest country in the western hemisphere, Haiti has devoted geospatial personnel and reasonable capacity to carry out geospatial programs at the Centre National de l'Information Géo-Spatiale, CNIGS (Photo Credit: Author)...................................... 32 Figure 6: This graphic depicts the standard consensus driven, probabilistic predictions of rainfall potential over the region based on a set of agreed-upon inputs. Source: Colombia University, IRI 1998 ............................................................................................................................................... 34 Figure 7: The map above was created by the Afghanistan Information Management Service (AIMS) and demonstrates that even under the most difficult conditions; mapping of critical resources can take place. Source: AIMS http://www.aims.org.af/................................................. 35 Figure 8: This slide was part of a presentation provided to the author depicting an ongoing analysis being performed by CNIGS in Haiti to refine the hazards and vulnerabilities in Gonaives following two catastrophic floods in four years. ........................................................................... 41 Figure 9: This map was produced and distributed one month prior to the eruption of Nevado del Ruiz volcano in 1985. Despite the obvious identification of the town of Armero (center, right) as vulnerable to mudflows, the information was not properly heeded and over 20,000 inhabitants of the city were killed when the volcano erupted. Source: Smithsonian Global Volcanism Program 2009. .............................................................................................................................................. 43

Index of Tables Table 1: Of the top 6 natural disasters since 2000, in terms of fatalities, only Cyclone Nargis in Burma (Myanmar) was more rural than urban in its impact. Source: EM-DAT ........................... 10 Table 2: The graphic above demonstrates one possible design fro a decision matrix for general risk. ................................................................................................................................................ 26

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Glossary of Terms and Acronyms ADPC Asia Disaster Preparedness Center ADRC Asia Disaster Reduction Center AURAN African Urban Risk Assessment Network CBDM Community Based Disaster Management CBDRM Community Based Disaster Risk Management CIESIN Center for International Earth Science Information Network (ColumbiaUniv.) CNIGS National Center for Geographic Information (Haiti) CRED Center for Research on the Epidemiology of Disasters EM-DAT The OFDA/CRED International Disaster Database FEMA Federal Emergency Management Agency FIRM Flood Insurance Rate Map GLIDE Global Identifier of Disaster Events GPS Global Positioning System HAZUS-MH Hazards US - Multi-Hazard IA2P International Association of Public Participation IDNDR International Decade for Natural Disaster Reduction ISDR International Strategy on Disaster Reduction IRI International Research Institute for Climate and Society (Columbia Univ.) NFIP National Flood Insurance Program NGO Non-Governmental Organization PDRA Participatory Disaster Risk Assessment SOW Scope of Work UN United Nations UNDP United Nations Development Program UNGA United Nations General Assembly USAID\OFDA United States Agency for International Development\Office of Foreign Disaster Assistance Accuracy

The degree to which a measured value conforms to true or accepted values. Accuracy is a measure of correctness.

ESRI

Asset The use of spatially enabled data inventories of infrastructure and resources to Author Management manage its use and maintenance in a cost effective and proactive manner. a calamitous event, esp. one occurring suddenly and causing great loss of life, Random Disaster damage, or hardship, as a flood, airplane crash, or business failure. House Geospatial A set of technological approaches, such as GIS, photogrammetry, and remote ESRI Technology sensing, for acquiring and manipulating geographic data An event or physical condition that has the potential to cause fatalities, Hazard injuries, property damage, infrastructure damage, agricultural loss, damage to NOAA\CSC the environment, interruption of business, or other types of harm or loss. The degree of detail recorded relevant to a data or information element. A Author & Precision measure of exactness. ESRI The potential for losses associated with a hazard, defined in terms of expected Risk NOAA\CSC severity and/or frequency, and locations or areas affected. The ratio or relationship between a distance or area on a map and the corresponding distance or area on the ground, commonly expressed as a Scale ESRI fraction or ratio. A map scale of 1/100,000 or 1:100,000 means that one unit of measure on the map equals 100,000 of the same unit on the earth. Triage A system of prioritizing based on pre-determined criteria. Most often used in Author

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mass casualty disaster situations to maximize lifesaving potential of limited resources. Vulnerability

The level of exposure of human life, property, and resources to impact from hazards.

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NOAA\CSC

Executive Summary This paper presents a flexible and modular approach to leverage local expertise, international resources and advances in technology to gain and operational understanding of urban risk to natural disasters. As cities grow in size and proportion of the global population and those of the developing world continue to physically expand vertically and horizontally, without the benefit of strong planning and engineering, urban natural disasters are likely to continue to increase in number and consequence. Disaster risk, being the result of the interplay between vulnerability and hazards, can be analyzed qualitatively and quantitatively to identify these variables with sufficient specificity to inform their modification informing risk reduction efforts. The development of an active and participatory community is the first and most critical step. Techniques exist to use facilitated workshops to identify risks and opportunities for their reduction without any technology other than paper and pens. These low-tech approaches are useful in educating the participants and gathering information on those events that have recent precedent and in rural settings, but they are limited in their utility in rapidly developing urban settlements for several reasons. First, as opposed to rural settlements, much of the urban population in these rapidly growing cities are new to the city and are not familiar with the hazards they are likely to face. Second, the rapid pace of urban development has modified the landscape and changed the hazard patterns and frequencies. Third, the urban environment depends upon infrastructure and utilities to meet the basic needs of their citizens. This reliance adds complexity and interdependence to coping strategies and emergency management in general. Finally, the dynamic nature and complex governance of urban settlements requires an approach that can be recorded, compiled, analyzed and maintained over time and is not suited to infrequent, one-off type activities. The international development community has identified risk reduction as one of the greatest challenges of our time. With the leadership of the United Nations, the Hyogo Framework for Action has been developed to structure the discourse and set priorities for assisting the global community in this pursuit. Risk awareness and hazard mapping have been identified as being central to this objective. With the assistance of this framework and other resources from the international community, as well as the combination of cost effective technologies and methods to motivate community participation, urban risks can be inventoried to an extent sufficient to develop evacuation plans, and early warning strategies, heighten community awareness, and set priorities for more substantial interventions to make cities safer. Toward this objective, a process of disaster profiling, delineation of hazards, vulnerability identification and risk analysis can be developed with minimal, sustainable technology for almost any funding level. By leveraging international efforts and local information resources, the disaster history and even unprecedented, but possible events can be documented for inclusion in the analysis that follows. By thoughtfully looking at the hazard mechanisms within and near the city, likely hazard impact areas can be identified and delineated with reasonable confidence. Similarly, community assets, such as

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hospitals, shelters, housing and infrastructure can be inventoried methodically and individually assessed for their importance and fragility. By compiling this information with its location, it can be analyzed “geospatially” within a geographic information system to, at a minimum, identify where hazards overlap with vulnerabilities, and if greater specificity demands, estimate the level of impact and even estimate losses following specific disaster events. This geospatial approach has added benefits over analog approaches in the ability to generate custom reports and perform cumulative analysis to inform the more centralized and sophisticated planning mechanisms of city governance. The ability to provide customized maps and demonstrate scenarios visually also assists in communicating the complexity and importance of risk reduction activities. Additionally, the ability to add, modify and remove hazard and vulnerability information as development occurs, mitigation efforts are employed and new information becomes available give this approach the means to evolve over time. This ability, combined with the modular nature of the overall approach provides a simple, cost effective means to begin this process with little risk of having pursued the wrong path. Furthermore, the information contained in the annexes provides suggestions and resources on how to best configure a specific approach based upon the resources and needs of any community. With sound leadership, a motivated community, appropriate use of sustainable technology, and well established techniques management, it is possible to initiate a program of risk identification that can be framed in a way to secure resources and make the most of them. As a tool for governance, management and political decision making, these approaches can support and validate efforts to reduce risk. Ultimately, it is hoped that by having a clear picture of risk and the appropriate steps to reduce it, government, donor and private investments in risk reduction can become as palatable as the money spent for disaster response and traditional development programs.

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Introduction: History provides many examples of major disasters striking the urban world. In historical fact, mythology and even popular culture, the destruction of cities and the human toll that follows fires the imagination and represents a category of horror that has few parallels. Cities ranging from Pompeii, Atlantis, Chicago, Port Royal, Sodom/Gomorrah and, cinematically at least, New York, be they fact, fiction or faith-based, all provide cautionary tales that are part of the local culture and in some degree the human fabric. While these events are prominent in history, cities are still severely damaged and destroyed in contemporary history. Recent urban disasters include floods in Gonaives, Haiti, earthquake in Musafrabad, Pakistan, volcanic eruption in Plymouth, Montserrat, tsunami in Banda Ache, Indonesia and there are many more examples. While the nature of these risks may change over time, such as the reduction in major urban fires, absolute vulnerability for a citizen in a city in the developing world may be on the increase due to the speed with which these cities are growing, the limited powers of city governments to control this growth and changes patterns of hazard events.

Figure 1: Poor construction practices in rapidly growing areas obscure the true vulnerability of cities in the developing world. This photo from Izmit, Turkey from August of 1999 displays the complete failure of a major building following an earthquake. (Source: Author)

For the first time in history, the majority of humans now live in cities or non-rural areas (UNFPA 2007). For much of the world, informal, self built, un-engineered structures prevail with little consideration given to risks of site selection (Wenzel 2007). Throughout the developing world many cities now have unprecedented physical extents, populations and management challenges. One central management challenge for urban planners is disaster risk awareness in such a dynamic environment. Disasters have predictable behaviors once triggered. For example, floods follow the drainages, earthquakes shake certain soils more than others, landslides happen on and under steep hills. By considering these realities and delineating them spatially on maps, the areas at actual risk can be identified. This knowledge can help motivate the properly targeted

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enforcement of building codes and zones to avoid urban growth into the path of hazards. Of course, this must be accomplished while balancing the needs of growing cities to help offset the everyday challenges of crime, homelessness and poverty. To some degree, the use of this approach to identify safe areas is as valuable as identifying the hazard areas and the two products should be intertwined to give decision-makers the options necessary to manage. This paper provides a process workflow and resource guide to assist with natural disaster risk awareness in cities within the developing world. By following this process, the risk level can be determined in locally appropriate terms to assist in prioritizing risk reduction efforts such as disaster mitigation, early warning and future risk avoidance. Unique in this approach is a heavy reliance on geospatial information and participatory approaches to provide a common framework for analysis and a participatory means to both gain and give information to and from those living in the communities respectively. Table 1: Of the top six natural disasters since 2000, in terms of fatalities, only Cyclone Nargis in Burma (Myanmar) was more rural than urban in its impact. Source: EM-DAT Dates

Geo

Start

End

26/12/2004

2/5/2008

12/5/2008

26/12/2004

3/5/2008

12/5/2008

Disaster

Numbers

Country

Location

Type

Sub Type

Indonesia

Aceh province (Sumatra)

Earthquake (seismic activity)

Tsunami

Myanmar

Ngapadudaw, Labutta, Mawl ...

Storm

Tropical cyclone

China P Rep

Wenchuan country, Wencgua ...

Earthquake (seismic activity)

Bagh, Muzzafarabad, Poonc ...

Earthquake (seismic activity) Earthquake (seismic activity) Earthquake (seismic activity)

8/10/2005

8/10/2005

Pakistan

26/12/2004

26/12/2004

Sri Lanka

26/12/2003

26/12/2003

Iran Islam Rep

Bam (Kerran province)

Name

Killed ↓

Tot. Affected

Est. Damage (US$ Million)

165708

532898

4451.6

20040659

138366

2420000

4000

20080184

Earthquake (ground shaking)

87476

45976596

85000

20080192

Earthquake (ground shaking)

73338

5128000

5200

20050575

35399

1019306

1316.5

20040659

26796

267628

500

20030630

Tsunami Earthquake (ground shaking)

Cyclone Nargis

Natural hazard risk reduction in urban landscape is challenging due to greater reliance on utilities, external food sources and the built environment necessary for the delivering essentials of daily life. Put another way, the individuals are contained in a complicated system of systems to meet their daily requirements that affords fewer options for self reliance within the densely built environment. While urban centers benefit in the efficiency of disaster response and recovery, due to their proximity to government, first responders, income sources, press and international donors, the concentration of populations can escalate minor hazard events to disaster status when impacting an unprepared population. (See Table 1 above) In the densely built environment, it is also easier to overlook about the natural world, which the buildings and pavement can mask, but not fully control. Increased runoff from impervious surfaces such as pavement and 10

DisNo

roofs can turn a downpour into a flash flood and a poorly drained neighborhood can turn a flash-flood into a disaster. Dense urban spaces place buildings at risk of failure and from other buildings during earthquakes and flash floods. Urban risk identification is complicated and requires a thoughtful, deliberate approach.

The World Bank and the United States Geological Survey calculated that the worldwide economic losses from natural disasters in 1990s could have been reduced by US$280 billion if US$40 billion had been invested in disaster preparedness, mitigation and prevention strategies. Guha-Sapir and Others 2004

In 2005 the international community, through the UN led International Strategy on Disaster Reduction (ISDR) developed a plan to advance disaster risk reduction efforts throughout the world. Through the "Hyogo Framework for Action 2005-2015" ISDR has developed a mechanism to focus the efforts of those organizations responsible for risk reduction and align them toward this common goal. This paper will reference and place itself within the Hyogo framework for the purposes of adhering to an established structure and also to provide support for those seeking support from external sources that might require such a linkage.

Background According to a recent study by the United Nations, more than 50% of the world’s populations now live in urban areas.(cite) This population influx has been exceptionally challenging in the developing world where a lack of rigorous building codes, limited enforcement of those codes and the pressures associated with time and budget constraints may be placing millions of people at risk to natural hazards. (cite) Earthquakes, floods, landslides and other natural hazards can rapidly and significantly impact cities and set back the development of an entire country for decades. Recent events in Turkey (earthquake 1999) and Indonesia (earthquake\tsunami 2004) have demonstrated that while cities can provide opportunity and livelihoods, some are increasingly vulnerable to dramatic disasters that can have disastrous effects on an unprepared populace. This combination of a rapidly growing population in poorly engineered and hastily constructed dwellings must be reversed and knowledge of the extent and magnitude of the problem is the first step in reversing this trend.

Urban planning exists in the developing world and in centralized economies it can have a very strong influence on the built environment. Perhaps unique to the developing world is the degree to which areas can be left out of the planned area. While emphasis can be placed on the central business district, often large areas of city are left unmanaged and support large slums or otherwise unplanned development. Disaster management is frequently left to a Civil Defense entity within military or a rarely used arm of government that does not have the cross cutting mandates necessary to optimally manage. One aim of the DRR community is to get it brought out into its own ministry or cross cutting office to better reflect the realities of their responsibility. Past experience also

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suggests that weak disaster management offices are pushed aside by political task force leaders during major disasters, often disconnecting the mission from its pre-plans and professional priorities.

Purpose This paper provides a systematic approach toward natural hazard risk awareness in order to facilitate informed preparedness and risk reduction efforts. This paper is specifically aimed at urbanized areas in the developing world, and provides for a suite of sustainable and low cost activities to ensure budget constraints do not constrict completion or longterm maintenance of the effort. This approach is not a one-off project, but a suggested change in urban management methods that integrates data collection and analysis into daily responsibilities in order to inform the public and decision makers, monitor changes and assess risk on an as-needed basis.

Scope This document is intended to provide a reference to facilitate risk awareness and reduction through the use of low-costs sustainable geospatial techniques. It is intended for use in the developing world and specifically urbanized areas. It should be considered a thought provoking guideline for one approach to achieving this objective. The approach is intended to be scaleable in that it can be performed at minimal effort and low precision to gain basic awareness of risks, or high effort and high precision to precisely delineate and define the risks from all hazard exposures. A successful strategy for application of this approach would be a rapid, low precision, one-off effort replaced by a comprehensive, high precision, systematic effort that is sustained and maintained over time. The low precision approach could look at city administrative units as the unit of study to define what hazards, vulnerabilities and resources exist within each and find some means to categorize them. The high precision could use hazard models and vulnerability and resources inventories collected with precise spatial coordinates. If executed thoughtfully, the low-precision could be used to prioritize the high precision effort and can, at a minimum provide a basic stop-gap to suggest quick hit efforts to reduce the risk within the most vulnerable areas.

Intended Audience This paper is intended for emergency managers and urban planners within cities in the developing world. In many cases these positions are either non-existent or poorly staffed. Although literature sources are limited on the topic, discussions with practitioners suggest that one of the chief sources of urban vulnerability in the developing world is the lack of a planning culture and profession. In many cases, emergency management is handled by civil protection\defense agencies that are focused on early warning and response activities with few resources set aside for risk reduction or mitigation. This paper aims to provide another resource toward the growth of professional disaster planning in these communities and provide linkages to the network of experts available to assist further. 12

Beyond government, this paper is intended also for Non-Governmental Organization (NGO), University or community organization that may have a role in supporting a government led effort or may choose to take on this activities in a leadership role. As a secondary audience, this paper is also aimed at disaster researchers to encourage refinement of the approach and tailoring to specific situations and to ensure that technological innovations and future projects provided for developing nations have a framework within they could be integrated to ensure longer term utility than creation of a single map or report.

Geospatial Approach Nearly all information regarding hazards and disasters has a specific location associated with it. This commonality allows information to be analyzed and visualized in a map which provides a platform for observing adjacency and proximity in both real and hypothetical scenarios. This information can be presented in a meaningful way that is not possible with non-spatial approaches such as spreadsheets and narrative reports. Information that is functionally disparate in conventional information products can be seen as critically interrelated within a map-based approach. For example, while a list of washed out bridges in a report is informative, the map showing those same points along with the road networks and population centers, also shows the areas made inaccessible and suggests the optimal prioritization of repair. This information is stored, processed and visualized within a Geographic Information System (GIS) which is a database empowered with a mapping interface. Each feature on the map, like a road segment, town or airport, will have a corresponding record within a database that holds important attribute information about those features. Many different types of information can be cross-analyzed to provide enhanced information products. For example, with information on a flood extent and population distribution data sets, a GIS can calculate the number of persons likely to be impacted by the flood. Additional information on political boundaries can be included to estimate those numbers by district to inform politicians of the impact on their constituents. To perform a GIS analysis, all features must be located on the earth or geo-located. This can be accomplished through the use of existing maps, Global Positioning System (GPS) units, satellite or aerial imagery and even community sketch maps. To populate the attributes related to each one of these features, a careful strategy should be developed that determines the necessary data elements, their most useful format, the best approach to collecting them and the processes for maintaining that information over time. This approach relies on the fact that disasters occur when natural hazards and vulnerabilities are coincident in time and space. Also relevant to this analysis is the location of evacuation routes, response resources, safe areas, and many other aspects relevant to disaster preparedness and risk reduction.

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Geospatial Asset Management In recent years, municipal governments have begun to use GIS as a means to manage the physical assets of their communities. By building detailed inventories of all things owned and managed by the government they are able to know what they possess. By integrating this information with repair orders and schedules for inspection and maintenance schedules they are able to manage work teams and provide detailed reports on the current status of the assets. With this type of technology, a small number of city staff can efficiently manage a large number of assets. For this approach, it is proposed that the concept of inventories include physical assets such as hospitals, shelters and rescue squads, but also be expanded to include natural hazard areas, evacuation routes and possibly even social assets like political units and community groups (site). With inventories of hazards, vulnerabilities and response resources, it is possible to categorically identify risk and once identified, begin the efforts at reduction.

Using this Document While this paper is designed to be at a minimum, informative and referential, it is presented in a manner that will allow the reader to walk through the process described in a systematic way, ultimately arriving at a state of improved risk awareness. Each step is properly situated sequentially within this logical framework however; some may be pursued in parallel, such as the development or hazard and vulnerabilities. Should the reader intend to use this framework in full, it is strongly recommended that their initial and ongoing emphasis be in the establishment of professional networks, formal and informal partnerships and community engagement as the work will exceed the capacity of most disaster planning offices and it is essential that the results be trusted by the population. The ultimate goal of this effort is to identify areas of risk with sufficient confidence as to justify behavioral or land use changes to achieve risk reduction and early warning to save lives, livelihoods and property. Without the public's confidence and understanding of the meaning behind this effort will itself risk being ignored or otherwise irrelevant. Finally, this is not a process to initiate in the immediate stages prior to an impending event. This effort should be a long term effort that is deliberately pursued with the first version being concluded in a matter of months to a year and the process ongoing as more data is compiled and as the situation changes. This must not be pursued as a project with a discrete ending point, but as an ongoing process, always working to keep up with urban growth and ahead of disasters. This process will change the way disaster risk assessment and disaster management is pursued and should be seen in the long term perspective. This paper assumes some basic technology is available to the leader of such an effort. These include a computer and a reasonably fast internet connection. One or more lowcost GPS unit may be ideal, but may not be required if reasonable maps or aerial

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photography exist. The software necessary for this analysis is either available for purchase or for free download. Annex A provides a listing of geospatial resources. Existing Foundations This paper relies heavily on established activities that are in place to provide support as well as positive and negative examples. Academic risk studies provide the intellectual framework to the support and guide the study of this aspect of society. International frameworks are those systematic efforts which attempt to provide the big picture within which small efforts can combine to exceed the sum of their parts. In this case, disaster risk reduction is the big picture and the path toward that objective is broken out into a variety of contributing elements that must be accomplished to systematically advance the effort. The objective of urban risk identification in the developing world is not without precedent and some of these approaches are also described below with some analysis of how they compare and contrast to each other and the approach offered in this paper.

Academic - What is a Disaster? Miriam Webster defines disaster as "a sudden calamitous event bringing great damage, loss, or destruction". This definition includes the input variables for the basic formula of risk being (UNISDR 2004): Risk = Hazard x Vulnerability Distributing the elements of the Miriam Webster definition might look like this: Risk = ["a sudden calamitous event"] x [things that can be "damaged, lost or destroyed"] Therefore, to know ones risk, one must first know the locations, type, magnitude, intensity and frequency of calamitous events (hazards) and know community population and assets and understand their fragility and behavior under the local assortment of likely hazards. Vulnerability can be further refined by including those things that might assist in adding resiliency and assist recovery as offsets to the assets at risk of damage loss or destruction. Examples are shelters, early warning systems and well trained first responders. These elements would be considered resources. For the purposes of this paper, we will lean on the above terms and the basic formula to guide the development of a geospatially enabled urban risk awareness program. Risk reduction comes from the adjusting of the variables in the above equation. Reducing Vulnerability by improving resiliency and preparedness lowers the risk. Repairing vegetation in watersheds can decrease the frequency and intensity of flooding events and is an example of hazard reduction or mitigation. While this formula may be relatively simple conceptually, the challenge and opportunity comes when the Hazards and Vulnerabilities are specified in terms of the features in a specific community. Once

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you identify a specific neighborhood at high risk of flooding from a specific source, you are halfway to an action plan for taking steps to reduce the risk of lives being lost and property destroyed.

International Frameworks International frameworks and strategies exist as means to coordinate action between stakeholders in the highly fractured community of international development. Consisting of the national government, United Nations, donor governments, non-governmental organizations, private industry and academia, this community often works in close proximity and sometimes at cross purposes. The frameworks are relevant in that they aim to formalize the discourse of the practitioners and academics into a set of guidance elements to assist donors on targeting their financial resources. By adopting this discourse and positioning projects within the context of these frameworks, those seeking resources are better positioned to receive them. This is also a means of assimilating advanced thinking and research into a community that is made up of professionals often working on small, narrow pieces of the overall puzzle. Frameworks let them see their place in the larger picture and open their eyes to more thoughtful ways of performing their work. Disaster management and international development are two disciplines gaining in maturity and professionalism. As they do so, they have better realized their interdependence as development will not progress without keeping disasters in check and disasters will only worsen without raising the standard of living for people, especially as populations increase. In the International community, the United Nations has led an effort since the early 1990s to help advance the cause of disaster reduction as a means to save lives and protect development investments and trajectories. In 1987 the United Nations General Assembly approved an initiative declaring the 1990s the International Decade of Natural Disaster Reduction (IDNDR) (UNGA 1989) This effort was engaged by national committees or focal points in 137 countries and a deliberate set of principles, an action plan and a follow-up action plan for after the decade. (UNGA 1994) Following the 1990s a new mechanism was initiated to sustain the activities begun through the IDNDR and continues the pursuit of its goals called the International Strategy for Disaster Reduction or ISDR. This entity remains in place with the following four objectives: • • • •

Increase public awareness to understand risk, vulnerability and disaster reduction globally Obtain commitment from public authorities to implement disaster reduction policies and actions Stimulate interdisciplinary and intersectoral partnerships, including the expansion of risk reduction networks Improve scientific knowledge about disaster reduction

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More recently, the ISDR further formalized its thinking by developing and promoting of the Hyogo Framework for Action 2005-2015: Building the Resilience of Nations and Communities to Disasters. This includes the latest thinking on risk reduction and a look at the past initiatives to inform future directions. In the retrospective portion, there is an acknowledgement of the need to improve risk identification and preparedness for effective response and recovery, two areas central to this paper. The framework itself makes direct reference to mapping stating: “Develop, update periodically and widely disseminate risk maps and related information to decision-makers, the general public and communities at risk in an appropriate format.” (Hyogo Sec. 2.i.a) The framework also challenges the community further to develop the capacity to do this locally: “Support the development and sustainability of the infrastructure and scientific, technological, technical and institutional capacities needed to research, observe, analyse, map and where possible forecast natural and related hazards, vulnerabilities and disaster impacts.” (Hyogo Sec. 2.iii.i) Finally, the framework challenges the community to develop locally sustainable tools to facilitate the use of these maps in a loss estimation and risk monitoring system to be able to effectively observe and record the progress of such an analysis empirically. “Establish and strengthen the capacity to record, analyze, summarize, disseminate, and exchange statistical information and data on hazards mapping, disaster risks, impacts, and losses; support the development of common methodologies for risk assessment and monitoring.“ (Hyogo Sec. 2.iii.l) These three sections demonstrate the full lifecycle of mapping’s role in the risk reduction framework and provide specific citations that may be used to translate the tactical needs of an urban manager into the language of the international development community. While not all signatory nations and development organizations strictly adhere to these frameworks, they are well founded academically and practically and by adhering to the terminology and priorities within such a framework, an organization seeking resources is well positioned for consideration. Most people who review proposals are not technical specialist, but are generalists or experts at the process of providing grants. These individuals need the verbal hooks provided by the discourse of the community to ensure provide the comfort level necessary for releasing funds. Frameworks exist in the developed world as well and can often be seen within the national and supra-national governments that require coordination of a wide array of partners. Unlike the international development frameworks, there are more frequently significant financial resources assigned toward the desired outcomes of the initiatives. A

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disaster risk reduction example from the United States would be the National Flood Insurance Program which seeks to reduce losses from floods. The NFIP combines legal frameworks, mandates, money and strategies to support the flood insurance industry directly through underwriting of policies and indirectly through the creation of detailed flood risk maps used to properly measure risk and set rates accordingly. (FEMA 2009) We will emulate aspects of this later element in the approach described here.

Approaches The use of geospatial and scientific approaches for urban risk assessment are increasing as the research community moves from strategic level analysis (regional and national) to the more tactical level of community and urban based approaches. Each of the approaches follow a similar path of identifying hazards and vulnerabilities and comparing them for identification of risk. They vary considerably on their dependence on sophisticated technology and expertise, scientific validity, level of community engagement and local long term sustainability. While each of these approaches desribes a complete effort, it is important to note that aspects of any of these can be included in the approach proposed. In this way, each element is functionally a module in the larger effort and if superior to other sources, can be inserted into the analysis. The United Nation's Development Program (UNDP) hosts the Global Risk Identification Program (GRIP) which is very active in helping nations develop strategies and action plans for implementing the Hyogo Framework for Action. Within this approach is the Urban Risk Assessment which parallels the approach described here in many ways. Key differences reside in its lack of emphasis on citizen level public participation and its dependence on external expertise. This does have the advantage of a higher level of scientific rigor and more direct linkages with external partners. A second approach is provided by the International Institute for Geo-Information Science and Earth Observation in the Netherlands. Strengthening Local Authorities in Risk Management (SLARIM), this approach uses geospatial modeling to identify hazard areas and analyzes them against inventories of vulnerabilities collected by the community. Case studies in Nepal, India and the Philippines are available for review. Key differences are its reliance upon sophisticated modeling for hazard delineation and its focus on singular, primary hazards. A third approach is the Participatory Disaster Risk Assessment (PDRA) included in the Community Based Disaster Risk Management approach supported by the Asia Disaster Prevention Center (ADPC) and others. This approach builds of the established experiences of the Participatory Rural Assessment (PRA) model and follows the same risk identification workflow of the other approaches, but does so in a low-tech, participatory manner. The hazards are identified collaboratively by the residents of the area and sketched on hand-drawn maps. A number of participatory strategies are employed to help prioritize the natural hazard risks while simultaneously education the participants through the sharing of their knowledge and the distillation of the combined knowledge within the community (ADPC 2004). The challenges for this approach are in

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adapting it to the urban landscape where dependence on infrastructure, transient populations, less hazard awareness and greater social complexity exist. Another key difficulty is in the need to institutionalize the information collected through such an approach as the low-tech approach does not create any persistent data holdings that can be maintained and updated in between PDRA activities. A wide array of other informative and helpful programs exist that will be mentioned in upcoming sections of this paper and indexed in Annex C. Additionally, each natural hazard also has their own specialized frameworks to address specific risk resulting from specific hazards.

Reducing Urban Risk to Natural Hazards in the Developing World: A Geospatial\Asset-Based Approach This approach will provide a systematic process toward creation, utilization and maintenance of and information management and visualization system that arms the disaster manager or city planner with the information necessary to minimize the exposure of a cities population to natural disaster. This approach will leverage the existing frameworks, information sources and techniques to heighten risk awareness with sufficient precision that development and risk reduction decisions can be made with confidence and disaster plans can be developed to evacuate, shelter and care for affected populations with speed and equity. While the tangible output of this exercise will be information, the key deliverable will be an engaged and informed community. The approach will have the following steps: I. II. III. IV. V. VI. VII. VIII. IX.

Define the Scope and Objectives Community Building Compilation of a Hazard Profile Delineation of Hazard Areas Compilation of Known Vulnerabilities and Resources Compilation of Community Social Assets Risk Analysis Communication and Planning Maintenance

The following describes a systematic approach to identifying specific and cumulative natural hazard risks by integrating existing approaches and technologies. There are no pure innovations put forth, but the fusion of hazard profiles creation techniques, participatory risk assessment approaches, urban asset management concepts, collaborative hazard assessment and geographic information systems into a means to assess, record and monitor natural hazard risk awareness. This system of systems will result in a standard collection of hazard information, but will integrate it into an electronic system that can be maintained, visualized geographically and linked to workflow management systems that can increase efficiency of municipal maintenance.

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This is specifically relevant to the urban environment where physical assets are in such density and interdependency. For example, in a rural setting, a culvert may be just a drain under a road while in a city, in addition to a road, it may convey multiple utilities and present a hazard to hundreds of people downstream if it became blocked. The complexity warrants a sophisticated approach that is well within the reach of mid-range computers and low cost software. Information on cost effective geospatial software tools are available in Annex D. This inventory can be constructed on two different foundations, one a conventional survey of the people, assets and the land, the second a public participation effort where a dialog is carried out to identify the same information. The latter is recommended as it is beneficial to capture information while engaging, educating and learning from the public. As proposed, this activity will be larger than the specifics of a participatory effort both in scope and duration. It is recommended that the participatory element be modeled after the Community Based Disaster Management (CBDM) method, or more specifically, a Participatory Disaster Risk Assessment (PDRA) to engage the community in a structured dialog toward shared learning and engagement (ADPC 2004). This activity will run parallel to such an effort inventorying the findings into a geospatially enhanced database system, recording the information for future use and analysis while creating a baseline that will be maintained over time. One challenge for using this approach is that it evolved from rural roots and requires tailoring to the urban context. Work has been done toward this objective and experiences in Nepal and Sri Lanka are well documented for review (UNDP 2005, UNDP 2006). For the remainder of the document we will use the term PDRA to identify this process. I. DEFINE THE SCOPE AND OBJECTIVES To manage expectations, alleviate concerns and ensure transparency of motives, it is critical to initiate this process with a clear and documented understanding of what will be done and what the consequences of the efforts findings will entail. The Scope of work (SOW) will define the parameters of the activity in terms of location, duration, requirements from participants, definition of what is to be produced and what that product is to be used for. This is a good practice for overall project management and may prove useful in communicating the objectives of the data collection component of this effort to citizens, politicians and other stakeholders. In defining the scope within a participatory framework, it is critical to define and communicate the decisions to be made, topics under discussion and deliverables planned. It is important that the objectives of this effort be clearly defined in order to motivate public engagement and to ensure that the results do not create expectations that cannot be met. Specifically, the SOW must define the intended benefit to the community of their participation in terms of reduced natural disaster risk. Awareness of natural disaster risk by city managers is not enough. It must be tied to education, mitigation, development of

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early warning systems and plans or a concerted advocacy effort to acquire the means to achieve some similar activity. This approach will work with the community to answer four questions with actionable precision in regard to natural disaster risk: 1. 2. 3. 4.

What and where are our cities hazards? What and where are our cities vulnerabilities? What and where are out cities resources? Where are our cities greatest perceived risks?

Each question must be addressed by a representative group of stakeholders including technical specialists, residents and government representatives. The collection of data in parallel with a PDRA will warrant specific explanation to all participants and be presented in a way to address concerns relating to any potential liability or recording of personal information. As with all such activities, there needs to be specific ground rules presented up front to ensure an open dialog and this data collection effort must remain bound by those rules. The scope must also define the geography and duration of the study effort. In some cases the geography may exceed the political boundaries of the municipality as the hazard sources may originate in the adjacent areas. The duration of the effort will need to be determined based upon estimates of the order of magnitude of effort required. The identification of deliverables in the SOW should extend beyond the participatory element and encompass the goals of the entire program. This end result should also be subjected to public review to ensure that the priorities identified are defendable to the public and that future risk reduction activities are supported. One model of this is can be observed in association with the US\FEMA Flood Insurance Rate Maps (FIRMs). While the mapping itself is performed by engineering companies, upon completion, the maps are publicly vetted and citizens are encouraged to validate the accuracy of the products and allow for a formal means of challenging the findings. While this approach does not anticipate such legally binding consequences, the right of the public to validate is critical to ensuring they will take the threat seriously once delineated. II. BUILDING A COMMUNITY While the term community is often associated with a location and its residents, this approach shall use a broader definition that includes those who have an interest in the place and its residents, and those who wish to assist them in pursuit of risk reduction. In this case, the community will include the residents of a location, the responsible government agencies, academics, non-government organization, international organizations, foreign donors and the private sector. It will include developing the means to be discovered and communicate also it will require strategies to recruit, communicate and document progress. It will rely heavily on public participation, outreach and focused leadership while encouraging openness and transparency. Community development will

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be a process that builds on existing mechanisms and develops them through outreach, broad participatory engagement and sustained engagement stages into a participatory local governance structure to help encourage and continue progress. Community outreach and participation described as a continuum that begins with the following four stages (Creighton 2005): 1. 2. 3. 4.

Inform the Public Listen to the Public Engage in Problem Solving Develop Agreements

A fifth category is added to advance the outreach and participatory efforts to building community and institutionalize the results. The purpose of this effort is to use the participatory effort to interactively inform all parties and develop plans for action, but also to prime the pump of an information management system that will sustain the knowledge going forward. Once implemented this system, supported by the community will continue to provide current status on risk within the city and be a useful and up to date reference when needed. As one proceeds through this process, it is helpful to keep the following seven principles in mind (Wenger and others, 2002): 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7.

Design for evolution. Open a dialogue between inside and outside perspectives. Invite different levels of participation. Develop both public and private community spaces. Focus on value. Combine familiarity and excitement. Create a rhythm for the community.

Inform the Public Informing the public must occur through locally appropriate ways. Often posters, local radio, community meetings provide a cost effective means to get the word out. In order to reach the international community, however, it is better to reach out to the specific specialty program areas of the United Nations, or the local NGO community. The Embassies of donor governments or their aid agencies should not be overlooked as a source of participation, recourses or other support. Communication must be sustained over time and those mechanisms best suited for getting attention and preliminary outreach efforts, may not be suitable for ongoing communications.

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A Case Study in Community Building - Namibia Flood Mapping During the disastrous floods in 2007, the Head of the Namibian Department of Water Affairs reached out to the international community for information on the ongoing disaster. His outreach effort gained him access to limited amounts of satellite imagery and analysis, but introduced him to many people in the international community who were interested in helping him serve his country with geospatial information on flooding. When the floods receded, he and a colleague attended an international meeting with many of these partners to strengthen the ties and when floods struck again in 2008 there were numerous partners ready to assist and timely imagery was provided to meet his requirements. Communications shared within this international community suggest he was simultaneously developing local partnerships to assist in predicting river flows and possible impacts in time to plan and execute evacuations. Take-Away: The international community has many resources to assist and is eager to engage trusted partners with operational requirements. The interest of all parties can be served when the existing frameworks are engaged and proper recognition is freely shared.

Listen to the Public Listening to the public will be pursued through the PDRA process and any public review mechanisms defined within the scope. The first step is to identify the public that will be listened to, or stakeholder identification. Identifying stakeholders for such an activity can be a challenge, but it is both a critical step to avoid omitting key participants and one that can be systematically approached, minimizing the likelihood of key omissions. Thoughtful identification of stakeholders can help ensure no key stakeholders are left out, properly target the program, reach the most interested individuals and organizations, and to assess the likelihood and intensity of controversy early in the process (Creighton 2005. p47). Though the approach may be conceptually simple, the execution may require considerable work. The example below is pulled from the natural resource discipline and modified for this scenario: 1. List the various essential community resources within the site e.g. medical facilities, schools, shelters. 2. List the functions and uses for each of the resources – e.g. for education, health, livelihood. 3. Identify the groups and actors that have a stake in each of the functions and uses of the various resources by asking the following questions • Who uses the resource(s)? • Who benefits from the use of the resource(s)? • Who impacts on the resource(s), whether positively or negatively?

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• • •

Who has rights and responsibilities over the management and use of the resource(s)? Who would be affected by an impact in the status, regime or outputs of the resource? Who makes decisions that affect the use and management of the resource(s), and who does not? (Modified from: Renard, Y. 2004)

By modifying this to process community assets such as schools, hospitals, and shelters, rather than mangroves, rain forests, and coral reefs, the same questions can be asked. The complexity arises when one looks at community assets and their interconnected stakeholder networks. For example a hospital has a patient catchment area, employees, and suppliers. This can be further complicated if it is the only hospital in the area with a specialty, such as an MRI machine or oncology department, which will have its own specific catchment area and set of stakeholder. While it is easy to see that everyone within and many people around a community will be stakeholders to some degree, the challenge often comes getting a representative stakeholder group and managing the size of the group. Energizing stakeholders can require active outreach efforts and it should not be expected that having too many will initially be a problem. Assembling a strong stakeholder group will take a targeted outreach activity and critical groups, such as citizens, may prove difficult to motivate. For this reason potential stakeholders must be sorted for their importance to the process and recruitment efforts should be proportional to this level. This effort will rely heavily on participation from a wide range of stakeholders in order to achieve success. Risk reduction requires making changes to behaviors, be they individual activities or regional land use decisions. The stakeholders in such an approach are many, ranging from transient population (tourists, migrant workers, etc…) to business and government agencies. Disasters potentially affect all citizens and risk awareness means little if not widely held prior to a hazard event.

Engage in Problem Solving Engaging in problem solving will occur if the PDRA above is contained within a full CBDM activity. Otherwise the PDRA will need to be followed with government or community action to demonstrate progress. This might be the development of low cost activities such as technologically appropriate early warning systems, marking evacuation routes, changing school curriculum and identifying safe sheltering sites. It may also encompass larger scale activities including engineered mitigation measures, watershed management efforts and land use changes. Either way, this effort should long outlive the public participation activity and may be supported by a citizen volunteer panel that will maintain the linkages to the public and the government decision makers. The governance and mandates of such organizations are highly dependent upon local government regulations, but can provide a mechanism for sustaining the activity.

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Develop Agreements The last of Creighton’s continuum stages is the development of agreements. This step is where the decisions are made and formalized. It may also include the development of action plans and implementations strategies to work toward the identified objectives. At its most basic, the phase will include the building of consensus among the participants. Consensus may be achieved short of unanimity provided the issues are properly vetted and the participants agree that a good compromise was reached. In consensus building the objective is a reasonable resolution or decision that can be tolerated by all (PDP 2009).

Community Building and Institutionalization Finally, these four steps can have one added to go beyond participatory engagement and into community building and some degree of institutionalization. A community or network must be developed that links all the stakeholders and engages them in a meaningful process to capture their interests, knowledge, attention, resources and energy. Most importantly, this community must earn their trust for it is likely that many of these interests will be in competition and the emergency management focal point must be seen as balanced and objective. Any new connections and relationships must be institutionalized to ensure this effort is long term in its scope and not personality based in its execution. By documenting commitments between organizations such as community groups, government agencies, international partners, schools and universities the effort can be formalized and sustained beyond the tenure of the interested parties who helped initiate the effort. Considerable literature exists on the concepts, principles and approaches to community building and links to some are provided in Annex D. III. CREATING A DISASTER PROFILE Human and geological history hold very few big secrets, although too often their story remains untold and key questions remain un-asked. Natural hazards occur in predictable places and it is the development of cities over these places that turn them into potential disasters. While robust scientific site analysis can find old fault lines and flood deposits, typically more cost effective means exist for identifying the hazards likely to visit upon a specific location and their frequency, albeit with reduced precision. This profile will be used to prioritize the Hazard Delineation process in the next section. A disaster profile is an inventory of the disasters a location is likely to experience in a foreseeable future and the recorded past. This section will provide an array of tools and strategies to develop a disaster profile from existing global, national and local resources. Creating a profile is critical for identifying infrequent, high impact hazards whose last occurrence may be prior to living memory. In most cases many of the threats are well established and one should not delay progress on addressing the known while searching for a potential unknown. This study should be carried out simultaneously with the other

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activities. The resources identified here each provide an opportunity to link in external experts into your extended risk awareness community. Compiling the inputs for a disaster profile can be done in three conceptual phases: • • •

Discovery Phase – What has happened in the past? Analysis Phase – What inherent risks does the physical situation of this city hold? Worst-Case Scenario Phase – Brainstorming on realistic, but unprecedented worst cases and compound disaster potential.

The discovery phase is completed through the thoughtful search of all historical sources to capture the scenarios that have already visited upon the cities location. These have limitations as the urban footprint and populations may have grown considerably. For this reason we seek information not just on disasters, but natural hazards as well. The analysis phase uses these natural hazard footprints as well as computer modeling, map analysis and/or field observations to identify areas at risk that may not yet have coincided with the initiating mechanisms of a natural disaster. This can also be facilitated through review of disaster case studies from similar cities. In the final phase, worst case scenarios for regional sources of disaster should be considered and investigated. This could include tsunami where there is no precedent, but mechanisms exist or any other potential, but unrecorded hazard exists. Also, compound disasters should be considered. Examples might include flood induced landslides that, if upstream could be overtopped causing unprecedented outburst flood or downstream causing a flooding river to backup within the city. These inputs must then be prioritized for action. Many tools exist to help with this process, the most intuitive being matrices that compare the frequency or probability that something will occur against the severity of current potential impact or exposure should it occur. The graphic below provides a simplified model. In addition to the matrix, it is critical that all terms used be strictly defined to ensure no confusion among participants. Links to additional risk assessment tools are provided in Annex G. Table 2: The graphic above demonstrates one possible design for a decision matrix for general risk.

Severity of Impact

Probability of Occurrence High

Medium

Low

Major\Catastrophic

High Risk

High Risk

Medium Risk

Significant

High Risk

Medium Risk

Low Risk

Minor

Medium Risk

Low Risk

Low Risk

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Once categorized into the matrix for analysis, each hazard should then be sorted based upon a triage approach, assigning them grades of low, medium and high risk with effort allocated to each accordingly, but some attention paid to all. The graphic below demonstrates a multi-indicator based categorization approach which distills many parameters into one actionable information layer.

Figure 2: Geospatial tools used by USAID’s Famine Early Warning System Network to communicate food security situations. (www.fews.net)

Working through the list from high to low might seem most logical, however, one cannot identify which disaster will happen next and the data that will be collected for a flood disaster may be substantially different from that collected for an earthquake causing redundant effort and risks fatiguing your volunteer network. While the mitigation of a specific vulnerability to a specific hazard may be appropriate, solutions should be first pursued that encompass reduction of risk from all hazards. This approach centers on elevating response and coordination capacity in addition to specific mitigation measures (FEMA 1996).

Global Resources Global disaster history databases and risk mapping is well established, though often less detailed than would be required for local utility. They do, however provide an excellent starting point to begin this analysis. This section will examine sources for data and collaboration. The OFDA\CRED Emergency Events Database (EM-DAT) maintained by

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the Center for Research in the Epidemiology of Disasters, and the Natural Disaster Hotspots initiative by the World Bank and Columbia University are two resources for understanding the nature of the hazards and risks anywhere in the world. In all cases, the data mentioned is geospatial and publicly available. Additionally, this section will introduce the reader to global activities focused on disaster education that will have resources and personnel available to assist with working through the process of disaster risk identification. Specifically described will be the ProVention Consortium and the ISDR EM-DAT is a disaster history database reaching back to 1900 and holding records on all known events where the one or more of the four following criteria have been met: • • • •

10 or more people reported killed 100 or more people reported affected Declaration of a State Emergency Request for International Assistance

This database is explicitly maintained for the benefit of researchers developing hazard profiles and the CRED staff will work with individual researchers to help ensure their analysis is properly designed and scientifically valid. The website allows for access to much of the information, but analysis of full records may require contacting CRED and submitting a request. The primary limitation of EM-DAT is the spatial precision. The database itself collects all data and assigns it to a country. The records do not have latitude/longitude or other means of adding precision to their location, although the notes field contained in each record may have more detailed information. This inhibits the ability to perform localized analysis and is why it is proposed here as a means to broadly identify the hazards faced (Guha-Sapir 2004 p17). CRED is currently leading an effort to improve the geospatial precision of their EM-DAT holdings and aims to develop a hazard and disaster “footprint” concept to assist researchers with data of much greater spatial precision. A workshop is scheduled for October 2009 to begin this work. The Disaster Risk Hotspots analysis takes the CRED data two steps further, first, it converts the information into modeled risk of mortality and economic losses, and second it presents its findings in a higher resolution, geospatial format. The Hotspots effort synchronized global economic, population and hazard data into useful results that provide the end user an assessment of the likelihood and locality of disaster impacts. (Dilley et al 2005) By turning the analysis into a map surface, the user of this data can overlay this information onto a study area and prioritize risk reduction strategies. Figure 3 shows this data for the Gulf coast of the U.S. This analysis has two primary limitations for local use. First, it is derived from global data that is spatially coarse and less reliable than local data. Second, the data itself is represented in 2.5’x2.5’ grid cells1 that translate into a nearly 3 mile square “pixel” value.

1

Grid Cells are the equivalent of pixels or the smallest unit within a grided data set.

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Figure 3: This graphic provides a representation of the Global Hotspots data for a portion of the U.S. Coast that is highly vulnerable to tropical cyclones. Source: Earth Institute, Columbia University

Many initiatives exist to provide data on specific hazards. Each has strengths and limitations. The following provides a starting point for analysis from global sources:

International initiatives The ProVention Consortium is succinctly described in it’s website as: “a global coalition of international organisations, governments, the private sector, civil society organisations and academic institutions dedicated to increasing the safety of vulnerable communities and to reducing the impacts of disasters in developing countries. It provides a forum for multistakeholder dialogue on disaster risk reduction and a framework for collective action.” As such, it advances risk reduction through the facilitated advancement of the science and discourse in order to ensure access to the best and most current knowledge on the topic available. Through the coordination of meetings and workshops, publication of

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documents, development of tools and dissemination of all research, this activity provides access to a wide array of resources to assist in risk awareness and reduction. One specific tool of interest is the Community Risk Assessment Toolkit which provides case studies, methodologies, a search tool, glossary and extensive links focusing on community based risk management and best practices in participatory processes. The International Strategy for Disaster Reduction (ISDR) is coordinated by the UN Undersecretary for Humanitarian Affairs and, as mentioned previously, is a mechanism to provide a framework for disaster reduction articulated in its current form through the Hyogo Framework for Action. The ISDR is also a consortium that aligns the efforts of numerous academic, financial, international and national stakeholders in order to ensure access to resources relating to risk reduction. The ISDR aims to advance risk reduction through a series of for a called “platforms” which include Global, Regional, National and Thematic. This system will allow for participants to link to relevant colleagues for support and for the exchange of best practices and lessons learned. Within the system is the PreventionWeb site that has categorized access to significant information resources including hazard studies and GIS\mapping approaches specifically.

Regional Resources Many regional institutions are leading efforts comparable to those on the global level, but more detailed and usually provided in a more culturally palatable way and in local languages. Some example s of these are Desinventar, The Asia Disaster Preparedness Center (ADPC), the Asia Disaster Reduction Center (ADRC) and the African Urban Risk Analysis Network (AURAN). Last, an inventory of regional and national data sources is provided in CRED's Disaster Data Portal or DisDat Desinventar was developed in Central America to provide greater granularity and local input to the disaster history database. Similar in concept to EM-DAT, this model is more participatory with many members and participants and a lower threshold for disaster event inclusion. Desinventar allows vetted partners to log records through an array of tools. This data is made available to approved researchers for studies and disaster profile generation. However, it is focused is on a limited number of countries, mostly in Latin America. The Asia Disaster Preparedness Center in Bangkok, Thailand was established in 1986 making it one of the older initiatives of its type. As with the other global and regional initiatives it contains a wealth of information of use to disaster managers within and outside of the region, however, of specific use to the purpose of this document, it contains national disaster profiles. Founded in Kobe, Japan in 1998 as a substantial response to the Great Hanshin-Awaji earthquake in 1995, this center has some redundancy with ADPC, but has developed its own niches. Two specific initiatives of interest are its disaster profiles which assess recent disaster history, legal frameworks for disaster management and other relevant reports of interest. Tying together this information is the GLIDE number. The GLIDE is

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a global unique identifier number established for a disaster that allows information from all complying sources to link together. Searching the GLIDE database can provide links to textual reports on specific disasters and it hoped to advance into more sophisticated data exchanges in the future. The African Urban Risk Analysis Network is a network of six partner organizations and is still in the formative stages. It is currently working in five African countries on fairly localized initiatives, but would be ripe for engagement by city managers with specific requirements for hazard profile development. CRED and the Global Risk Identification Program (GRIP) are collaborating on an spatially enabled search engine to allow discovery and access to disaster databases throughout the world. These include regional and national data efforts contained in the Disaster Data Portal (DisDat). This links many of the Desinventar activities with several other national efforts in a map interface that allows quick discovery and full metadata access.

Figure 4: The CRED\GRIP DisDat Portal provides quick access to disaster databases from around the world. ( www.disdat.be/)

Local Resources In nearly all cases, local resources exist to assist with disaster profile development. Such resources could be a local university, library, citizen testimonies, government documents as well as observable exposures and impacts remaining from past events. Many university researchers have interest in disaster studies and should be consulted to benefit from the research done in this area and to establish linkages for future collaboration on other components of this initiative. In some cases, such as CNIGS in Haiti (See Figure 5) and AIMS in Afghanistan, local institutions exist that leverage international donor support to provide expertise for the use of the government.

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With the specific larger events identified in the global or regional sources, these dates could be used for document and press searches through newspapers and other documents prepared in the time period that might be available in a local library or archive. These reports could provide greater detail to the specifics of the disaster including the impacts, locations and response activities. These reports should also be culled for clues to other information sources such as photographs or names of witnesses who may still be in the vicinity. For events in living memory, first hand accounts are possible from local persons who may have observed or experienced the events first hand. Such interviews should take into consideration the changes in land use that have taken place and seek impressions on how a similar event might impact the contemporary built environment might prove useful.

Figure 5: Despite being the poorest country in the western hemisphere, Haiti has devoted geospatial personnel and reasonable capacity to carry out geospatial programs at the Centre National de l'Information Géo-Spatiale, CNIGS (Photo Credit: Author)

Information of interest also may exist in the government archives and records from the period of the event. Ideally, these will hold some level of professionalism and specificity that could prove insightful for this effort. Larger disasters often inspire the response of the political entities to hold inquiries or establish panels to assess the cause of the events and the findings of these efforts would be most useful. Unfortunately, a hazard event in the past may not have risen to this level of interest and may remain undocumented while urban growth could make the return of an equal event catastrophic. If the disaster of interest occurred during a colonial period, it may be possible to seek out information from the colonizing government. This should also include searches of appropriate weather records and other scientific institutions. Perhaps the most valuable local asset in such an analysis is access to the city itself to observe the terrain, settlement patterns and general land uses in order to gauge the city’s vulnerability and strengths. The terrain and land use of a city can often propose interesting questions that relate to the avoidance of hazards based on good planning or

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hard lessons learned in the past. The location of parks and open space are often hazard related while the heart of the “Old City” may provide evidence of thoughtful site selection. While this will not replace the full analytical process proposed in this document, it is essential that one have the best possible understanding of a study area and an open mind to the myriad of information sources available both near and far. IV. DELINEATION OF HAZARD AREAS Identifying where hazard events might or have occurred is a science that relies heavily on experts, detailed datasets and robust computer processing. In the developed world, numerous examples of these efforts exist with considerable significance to those living within the identified hazard zones. In the developing world, this is not an optimal or sustainable model. It is suboptimal in that there is probably not a strong insurance mechanisms to help steer the development decisions through market forces which would justify the cost. It is unsustainable due to that cost and the need to maintain and re-assess as further development occurs. For the final public products, this paper considers a simple solution that leverages the neighborhood subdivisions that exist either formally or otherwise and assigns hazard vulnerability to these smallest divisible units of the city. In this way the locality will be made aware of their specific natural hazard concerns and can adjust behavior and plan accordingly with early warning and notification strategies. This is also important to avoid the confrontational tenor that often occurs with the battles over which property falls in which hazard footprint, thus affecting property values, limiting land uses and affecting insurance costs and availability. Though local situations may vary, it is hoped that this analysis can, at a minimum be performed at the most localized official administration unit of the city to assign the awareness and responsibility of action to a defined and accountable leadership team. This approach will require a localized triage approach with low, medium and high risks assigned based upon the original ranking and the degree of exposure to the particular hazard within the neighborhood. To assess this exposure, some means of detailed hazard delineation must occur. This can be performed through a participatory, expert consensus approach. This approach requires the convening of a meeting either with sufficient maps and visuals or containing a field component to have the most knowledgeable experts available “negotiate” a consensus hazard zone. To facilitate consensus, the use of probabilistic or ranked delineations can be employed. I this way the high hazard zone is where most agree, medium is where some have a strong feeling of risk and low where all agree there is little risk. This approach is used in Regional Climate Outlook Fora to assess the seasonal risk of rainfall anomalies in many regions throughout the world and is used to focus attention on areas of potential drought, flooding and increases in vector borne diseases. (NECJOGHA 2009) It is a merging of scientific data and expert opinion that provides a probabilistic assessment of specific risks and is suitable in situations where full data is either not available or the means to process do not yet exist.

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Figure 6: This graphic depicts the standard consensus driven, probabilistic predictions of rainfall potential over the region based on a set of agreed-upon inputs. Source: Colombia University, IRI 1998

V. COMPILATION OF KNOWN VULNERABILITIES AND RESOURCES Having captured the hazard information, it is now necessary to capture the vulnerability and response resources in order to finally assess risk. Vulnerabilities can be categorized as populations, infrastructure and special needs facilities. Response resources are anything that can be used to assist in the disaster response and can include fire\police stations, shelters, evacuation routes, medical facilities and safe areas. This information can be collected with volunteer assistance and the level of expertise available within your volunteer corps should be considered when determining what information will be collected.

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Figure 7: The map above was created by the Afghanistan Information Management Service (AIMS) and demonstrates that even under the most difficult conditions; mapping of critical resources can take place. Source: AIMS http://www.aims.org.af/

The approach suggested here will be an asset based approach where discrete features of interest will be collected and analyzed against the hazard inventory. Figure 7 presents an example of a map made from this type of information. This approach is problematic in terms of assessing some populations as they are largely mobile and heterogeneous. They are, however, the main point of emergency management as their health safety and comfort are of primary concern. Compounding this challenge is the daily and seasonal population movements that can cause considerable fluctuation in populations. This is particularly relevant in earthquake situations of other sudden onset events where evacuation is not possible prior to the event’s occurrence. References are contained in Annex D that provides links to approaches that can be considered. In short, the assessment of populations exposed to hazards is a function of identifying populations to the smallest spatial area and following the same procedures for the assets. This may be available from census, health or school information, may be derived from counting house roofs off of aerial photography. The technique will vary depending upon the available inputs and even greater complexity is introduced when considering vulnerability and coping capability of populations. As with any information collection initiative, careful prior thought must be given to what information will be collected prior. In some cases, the inventories themselves may

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already exist and be in geospatial formats for use, but additional details or attributes need to be collected about them. This phase will generally adhere to the following steps: • • • • •

Define Scope Needs Assessment\Requirements Definition Discovery Initial Data Collection Maintenance

Define Scope The scope of a project is the specific definition of what this information will be used for and what it will not be used for. This document will set the overall expectations of the exercise. This step should be thoughtfully pursued as it will be used in the processes that follow to define what will be collected and it may also be critical in communicating your intentions to others. This can be a simple document articulating your intentions to use the data for disaster planning purposes in a risk mapping initiative. It may extend into defining where the data will be kept, how it will be maintained and who it will be shared with. The scope must strike a good balance defining what your aims are without tying your hands as future situations change.

Needs Assessment\Requirements Definition Geospatial data is a combination of location and spatial extent data, referred to as a feature and data defining the details of that feature, call attributes. Both features an attributes need to be defined with great specificity and turned into data collection standards to ensure that all data collected from all sources is consistent in substance and validity. Defining the requirements for a data collection initiative with broad application is challenging as the natural compulsion is to try and collect as much information as possible, but the reality is that there is a balancing point, beyond which, each additional piece of information collected becomes more burden than its value added and begins to weigh down the effort, diminishing the ability to collect and maintain. To find this point of diminishing returns or equilibrium, it may be useful to assemble a sub-group of stakeholders to brainstorm on what information would be useful2. All reasonable submissions should be listed and retained for analysis. Number each of the suggestions and create a matrix3 with one axis containing the following categories: Necessary, Useful, Nice-to-have. On the perpendicular axis provide the following categories of collection burden: Easy, Moderate, Difficult. Remember to consider who will be doing the data collection as this will be important when determining the level of

2

Keep in mind the need for metadata, which is information about data including source, date and other necessary technical parameters. 3 This can be done on a computer, but may be more effectively presented on a large piece of paper with each attribute on a small piece of paper that can be physically placed in the grids, or even on the lines between the cells to resolve disputes.

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difficulty. With the group, try to reach agreement on where each item should be located within the matrix. Upon completion of the exercise use the findings to select the features desired for inclusion. Obviously, all “Necessary:Easy” data will be collected and all “Nice-tohave:Difficult” will be excluded, but the rest is negotiable. Finally, once the fields have been determined, it must be decided how the information should be structured. Simple format issues can confound data collection and analysis efforts. A basic example is the use of different date formats (day-month-year vs. monthday-year), but many more exist when it is unclear what each question is requiring for an answer. Also, resist the broad use of free text fields as these cannot be easily aggregated, do not enforce discipline in the data entry phase, and, despite advances in data mining technology, are not useful for any analysis that is looking at more than that specific feature. Free text is not discouraged, but best left to general comments or impressions from the data collectors. The best strategy is to define the desired answers to the questions up front through the development of ranking criteria, pick lists and most likely answers. Efforts should be made to mitigate the bias that is inherent in controlled data entry forms by allowing for tailoring by the end users or using text fields accompanying the structured data. These desired answers should always be determined based upon the intended use defined in the scope. Upon completion of this process the databases, survey tools and training curriculum for volunteers can be created. The database can range from a simple spreadsheet, a GIS data layer or a complex relational database system, but should be determined based upon the highest level of technology that can be supported for the long term. Survey tools should be simple forms with instructions for reference and training curricula should be focused on how to properly fill the forms and acquire the desired information.

Discovery In most cases, some data will exist that can be used for this analysis. It is likely that spatial data exists for the major roads, boundaries, rivers or contours. These may be in another city or national agency, with an NGO or found on the internet. They may be in the form of paper maps that need to have their features traced or digitized, or it may be satellite imagery or aerial photography. When leveraging existing data sets it is important to consider some specifics of the datasets before proceeding. For data to be used for meaningful analysis, it must be sufficiently reliable to meet your needs. This reliability may be assessed by observing the ways in which the producer uses and maintains the dataset and how central it is to their core workflow. Consider the source, the date, copyrights or other distribution restrictions, level of detail (scale\precision) and the accuracy. Many data sources will be snap-shots in time, but it may be possible to find data that is maintained by another agency or potential partner. In these cases, it may be possible to establish a data sharing agreement to ensure access to the best available data and reduce redundancy of effort.

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An example might be a Ministry of Education that maintains a database of their schools. The listing may be very detailed and current, but not geo-located. In exchange for frequent updates to their data, geo-location services and basic mapping may be exchanged. These exchanges are the threads that hold the fabric of a community together and should be sought out where possible.

Initial Data Collection A recommended approach for this initial pass is to employ the mapping tools developed for the Participatory Disaster Risk Assessment (PDRA) approach. While this entire suite of activities may be worthwhile in executing, given the nature of this activity, this paper will focus instead on this being a means to our objective of a geospatially enabled risk awareness. One significant aspect of the PDRA approach is participatory mapping activities. By providing either a blank piece of paper or a preliminary map, with minimal markings, the members of the community map out their hazards and vulnerabilities in a dynamic discussion with their neighbors. While this approach has many referenced successes on the internet, it is unclear if there is any precedent for injecting this information into a database for broader analysis and formal inclusion in the records of the city. While the PDRA approach is admirable in its approach, its combination with geospatial information collection can help the findings be institutionalized and retained. Future PDRA efforts in the same community can then pull from the existing record and change them as needed. Conversely, a geospatially enabled risk awareness effort does not preclude the need for a PDRA or other similar approach as the dialog and community learning that takes place in these activities is critical. Data collected via a PDRA effort will require some manipulation to integrate it into a rigorous structure of a database, but if this is known prior to conducting the participatory mapping exercise, the categories, rankings and standardized text can be provided to the participants and the friction minimized. Once all useable data is compiled and converted into geospatial and tabular information, the remaining data needs to be collected through conventional means. This typically means the deployment of survey teams to collect information. In doing so, safety is the first concern with efficiency a second priority. To assist both, it is advisable to carefully pre-plan survey missions and assemble teams of appropriate gender, ethnicity and age to best ensure they have the right mix to get straight answers from the community.

Maintenance All data has a shelf life, or span of time where it is considered to be valid. As the data ages, it becomes less useful and reliable. To overcome this one should establish a schedule whereby the data will be reassessed through a new PDRA or field surveys. One challenge to this is that, if the first batch was collected in one particular year when the project began, it will all grow stale at the same rate. It is therefore recommended to begin data maintenance immediately. By planning to recollect certain types of data or defined areas on a short schedule, you can stagger the data into a sustainable long term

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management burden. For example, if it is determined to refresh all data every three years, one third should be recollected after one year, another third after two and the rest after three. From this point forward all data will be collected on a three year refresh schedule with one third “expiring” each year. Data maintenance is not always a wholesale operation. As the situation changes on the ground, it is critical to have a network of community partners to provide this information in a timely manner. This data is then updated in the system, leaving the annual assessment of each third of the data to be only those data records that were not updated, thus reducing the burden further. Finally, be sure to continually refresh your professional network and seek out new opportunities for data sharing. Nothing is static, especially where technology is concerned and new sources and technologies will continue to make themselves available, especially as the benefits of your approach become clear. VI. COMPILATION OF COMMUNITY SOCIAL ASSETS While not as well established as the compilation of physical assets, it is possible to map out the individual capacities, community groups, and governance landscapes to assist in understanding how best to reach individuals and communities. It is critical to understand that the greatest resource of a city is its people and mechanisms must be supported that engage citizens toward solutions. Transferable lessons from economically depressed inner cities in the United States suggest that rather than looking at citizens as individual with needs, they also be perceived in light of their capacities (McKnight 1996). Capacity surveys can be carried out to inventory the skills available within the community and volunteerism can be made more effective by approaching the individuals with the most appropriate skills for the job at hand. It is also critical to ensure this approach has a mechanism for working with the political environment and not around it. While the core of this approach aims to be objective and apolitical, it needs to be cognizant of the political realities on the ground and work with them to make positive changes. In some cases this will require informal and unusual exchanges, such as risk reduction success in return for sharing the credit. Mapping the established political landscape can be relatively simple as it corresponds with wards or other administrative boundaries. The delineation of community group and NGO areas of responsibility can be more challenging as they are often arbitrary and based upon need and resources. Methods of community mapping unplanned developments such as barrios and slums exist and can be employed of warranted. (Perez 2008) While community assets no doubt factor into sophisticated risk assessments providing a coping support and accountability where they exist and properly function, their role in this methodology will be more to facilitate community building and communication of

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identified risk. While this simplifies the task at hand, it does limit the utility by not providing a clear indication of the value of these resources in risk reduction efforts VII. RISK ANALYSIS Risk analysis can be performed in very clear terms for one disaster type or more sophisticated cumulative approaches to capture overall risk. It should be performed in a hierarchical manner with a hazard specific phase which identifies high priority issues relating to each hazard. A second phase is a cumulative analysis that identifies absolute risk in all locations from all hazards. Finally, this information can identify areas for specific detailed analysis with the intent on reducing their risk.

Hazard Specific Analysis Referring to the initial formula where Risk = Hazard x Vulnerability, it is now possible to figure out the exposure to natural disasters. The approach proposed here is to make use of the triaging strategy we have employed throughout and assign a number to highmedium-low rankings we assigned for risk zones and the Necessary-Useful-Nice-to-have rankings for our vulnerability data. By assigning a value of 3 to the High and Necessary features and counting down we now have the means to use the GIS to overlay these two datasets and provide a numeric value to their risk. Areas with no risk will be assigned a 0 value. Thus, a hospital in a high landslide risk zone will generate a 9 value and the same hospital will generate a 3 in an area with no landslide risk. This will be repeated for all disaster types contained in the hazard inventory. Figure 8 below demonstrates a flood analysis for the city of Gonaives in Haiti.

Cumulative Analysis In measuring absolute or cumulative risk from natural disasters, the analysis can combine the values from each of the triage analyses. The by summing the risk quotients from each layer, our example of a hospital may have the following hazard numbers: Landslide:5, Flood:6, Tsunami:0, Earthquake:8, Volcano:0, Tropical Cyclone:0 for a combined allhazards risk quotient of 19. The limitations of a strict additive process are that it may hide extreme vulnerability to any one hazard. For example, a total of 9 may not rise to the level of attention in this analysis, but it could be a school in a floodplain. Thus the final, cumulative analysis is for information purposes only, to identify those that have high multi-hazard vulnerability and to accentuate the planning of any extremely vulnerable features.

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Figure 8: This slide was part of a presentation provided to the author depicting an ongoing analysis being performed by CNIGS in Haiti to refine the hazards and vulnerabilities in Gonaives following two catastrophic floods in four years.

Detailed Site Analysis Although this is beyond the scope of this analysis, the final step is to use the information collected to target detailed site analyses to assess the actual vulnerability of each feature of interest. Such an analysis requires engineering skills and may require more detailed data collection efforts and will possibly result in changes in major infrastructure be it retro-fitting, relocation or a use change. It is noted here for two reasons, first to understand that this is a key objective of this asset based approach, second, these new information sources and experts may provide value to this ongoing effort. In many cases a detailed site analysis may identify a considerable different risk score than did the triage analysis. In these cases, it is important that the detailed site analysis be recorded in the database. VII. COMMUNICATIONS PLANNING Communication of risk is a complex and sensitive issue and must be considered in any such program from the outset. How you are going to communicate your findings has direct bearing on what you will collect, how you will analyze and the products you intend to disseminate. Most importantly your communications are the tool used to encourage behavioral and land use change. The success of the initiative depends on how well you communicate risk and how well you highlight risk reduction initiatives carried out in the study area. The seven core principles of risk communications are : 1. Accept and involve the public as a legitimate partner. 2. Plan carefully and evaluate your efforts. 41

3. 4. 5. 6. 7.

Listen to the public's specific concerns. Be honest, frank, and open. Coordinate and collaborate with other credible sources. Meet the needs of the media. Speak clearly and with compassion.

Risk is also more meaningfully communicated when it is translated into terms that resonate with the community such as risk of mortality (deaths) even if this cannot be quantified. Abstract unit-less numbers ranking risk will pose communication challenges while estimates, even broad categories of expected fatalities will be far more compelling. Through the study of past events, the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) provides an example in the Prompt Assessment of Global Earthquakes for Response (PAGER) project. Along with modeled estimates of potential impacts, PAGER notifications, as in the example below, provide textual information on impacts from similar historical events. While PAGER is a response tool, the method could be employed for expected disaster scenarios and based upon the impacts in other locations with similar characteristics.

Overall, the population in this region resides in structures that are vulnerable to earthquake shaking, though some resistant structures exist. A magnitude 6.5 earthquake 324 km West of this one struck Indonesia on December 17, 1979 (UTC), with estimated population exposures of 26,000 at intensity VIII and 111,000 at intensity VII, resulting in an estimated 32 fatalities. On December 12, 1992 (UTC), a magnitude 7.7 earthquake 345 km East of this one struck Indonesia, with estimated population exposures of 15,000 at intensity VIII and 487,000 at intensity VII, resulting in an estimated 1,740 fatalities. Recent earthquakes in this area have caused landslides that may have contributed to losses. Source: PAGER Event ID: us2009nta5

Risk communication is a sophisticated field of study with considerable resources to assist in planning and execution. It must be considered throughout the entire process to ensure the outputs can be framed in compelling language to affect positive change, without causing panic or overselling the findings of this approach. In cases where no other information exists, an improperly communicated risk assessment could unfairly impact property values, building loans and, where offered, insurance premiums. Several examples are provided in Annex G.

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Figure 9: This map was produced and distributed one month prior to the eruption of Nevado del Ruiz volcano in 1985. Despite the obvious identification of the town of Armero (center, right) as vulnerable to mudflows, the information was not properly heeded and over 20,000 inhabitants of the city were killed when the volcano erupted. Source: Smithsonian Global Volcanism Program 2009.

VIII. MAINTENANCE The data collected and analysis performed in this or any other risk assessment approach is limited in its shelf life and begins to diminish in validity from the minute it is completed. To achieve sustainability, the planning and resources must be in place from the start to ensure that the data can be continually refreshed and the analysis performed periodically to minimize the degradation and reflect changes made by risk reduction activities. A schedule for release of products should be done on an annual basis if possible and versions should be strictly controlled to ensure analytical integrity. With such control time series can be compiled that will allow longitudinal analysis of risk related trends. The initiative outlined in this document pulls from many disciplines to provide a new approach for risk awareness. Specifically, the concepts of geospatial asset management are advanced within the risk reduction context as they are well established in municipal management and well situated for the dynamic environment that should exist within the risk reduction community. These technologies and approaches both hold inventories and allow for maintenance workflows to be efficiently managed. In this case, the ability to identify and optimize locations for follow-up or periodic assessment can provide specific details for articulating workforce requirements and resource needs. More information about these concepts and their implementation are included in Annex H. IX. CONCLUSIONS

With the benefit of the many global, regional and local resources available, it may be possible for an urban disaster manager to lead an effort to heighten risk awareness and lay the foundation for specific risk reduction activities. Such an effort could benefit from international funding sources aimed at satisfying the Hyogo Framework for Action and

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use the approaches laid out here or in other similar initiatives. By leveraging investments in related activities, such as Community-Based Disaster Management efforts, this approach can be rapidly advanced and serve the added purpose of capturing the information compiled for extending its use and maintaining it over the long term. Geospatial asset management is a well established tool of urban management and governance. Within the developed world and the tools to make use of this technique are readily available with low-cost alternatives available for basic functionality and considerable benefit to developing cities. Its value can go well beyond disaster risk identification, achieving considerable return on investment in short order. Areas for future study exist in putting this approach into practice. Only through engaging a real community and dealing with the tensions existing in local government and development pressures can one measure the true utility and sustainability of such an effort. Opportunities could be sought out to partner with a PDRA activity and see what could be compiled into a database format. Additionally, this paper can and will be shared with practitioners within the international risk reduction community for further peer review and integration into their list of resources. Another key element identified through this study is that the international community must look to support activities that are in harmony with current best practices in the developed world. Many development practitioners are not in touch with the current state of the art in the developed world and thus are at risk of prescribing archaic solutions. This is especially true in the fields benefiting from emerging technology. Hopefully this will encourage exploration of these approaches and help fold some new ideas into the solution sets. Beyond risk assessment, it is also hoped that this will support these approaches for all phases of urban planning. This approach does contain considerable challenges. Motivating all levels of society without strong government mandate or funding source requires a strong and charismatic leader with a clear and consistent message. Also, perceptions of possible effects on land uses and values may cause friction from land owners and create a climate where corruption or interference may be introduced. Ensuring sustainability is always a challenge where revenue sources are not direct. One key to long term success will be finding return on investment opportunities and possibly mainstreaming aspects of this approach, such as the asset management component, into core government functions. Finally, I hope that this document will prove enlightening and the resources useful. Recent years have provided rapid innovations in geospatial technology and these take time to advance into the daily workflows of established organization. This paper was intended to provide ideas, insights and references to help rethink how technology is used in risk identification in urban settings of the developing world and should it provide tangible benefit toward that objective it will have achieved its goal.

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Annex A – Global Natural Hazard Resources •

• •

• •

•

•

All Hazards o GRIP-CRED DisDat, Databse of Databases - www.disdat.be/ o Colombia University HotSpots www.ldeo.columbia.edu/chrr/research/hotspots/coredata.html o OFDA\CRED Disaster History Database - www.emdat.be/ o U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration www.ngdc.noaa.gov/hazard/hazards.shtml o U.N. Office of the Coordinator of Humanitarian Affairs, ReliefWeb www.reliefweb.int/ o MunichRE – NatCat Disaster Database www.munichre.com/publications/302-03901_en.pdf o MunichRE – NATHAN - mrnathan.munichre.com/ o MunichRE – Globe of Natural Hazards DVD www.munichre.com/en/publications/default.aspx o Richmond University Disaster Databse Project learning.richmond.edu/disaster/index.cfm o SHELDUS - University of South Carolina, USA webra.cas.sc.edu/hvri/products/sheldus.aspx o Pacific Disaster Center - www.pdc.org/atlas/html/atlas-init.jsp Flood o Dartmouth Flood Observatory - www.dartmouth.edu/~floods/ Tropical Cyclones o UNISYS Weather - weather.unisys.com/hurricane/ o Australian Government www.bom.gov.au/bmrc/pubs/tcguide/globa_guide_intro.htm Earthquakes o U.S. Geological Survey - neic.usgs.gov/neis/epic/ Tsunami o U.S. National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration www.ngdc.noaa.gov/hazard/tsu_db.shtml o University of Georgia (U.S.) www.gtsav.gatech.edu/cee/groups/tsunami/ Landslide o No public available global database exists other than the HotSpots analysis from Colombia University o U.S. Geological Survey Landslide Hazard program - landslides.usgs.gov/ Volcano o Smithsonian Institution Global Volcanism Program www.volcano.si.edu/world/allvolcs.htm o USGS\USAID Volcano Disaster Assistance Program vulcan.wr.usgs.gov/Vdap/framework.html

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Annex B – Supportive Organizations United Nations: Office of the Coordinator of Humanitarian Affairs - ochaonline.un.org/ International Strategy for Disaster Reduction (ISDR) www.unisdr.org/ United Nations Development Program (UNDP) www.undp.org/ Global Risk Identification Program - www.gripweb.org UN Geographic information Working Group (UNGIWG) - www.ungiwg.org/ United Nations Platform for Space-based Information for Disaster Management and Emergency Response (UN-SPIDER) www.unspider.org Operational Satellite Applications Program (UNOSAT) - unosat.web.cern.ch/unosat/ Global\Regional: Global Facility for Disaster Reduction and Recovery http://gfdrr.org/index.cfm?Page=home&ItemID=200 Global Risk Identification Program www.gripweb.org Provention Consortium - www.proventionconsortium.org/ Center for Research on the Epidemiology of Disasters (CRED) www.cred.be/ DasInventar www.desinventar.org/ Earthquakes and Megacities Initiative (EMI) www.emi-megacities.org Asia Disaster Reduction Center - http://www.adrc.asia/ Asia Disaster Preparedness Center - http://www.adpc.net/v2007/ Donor Agencies: U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) - www.usaid.gov European Community Humanitarian Office - ec.europa.eu/echo/index_en.htm Department for International Development www.dfid.gov.uk/ Australian Agency for International Development (AusAID) www.ausaid.gov.au/ Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA) www.acdi-cida.gc.ca/index-e.htm Related Organizations: GIS Development www.gisdevelopment.net/ URISA – GIS Corps - www.giscorps.org/ Global Spatial Data Infrastructure Initiative (GSDI) - www.gsdi.org/ GSDI Newletters - www.gsdi.org/newsletters.php Commercial: ESRI - www.esri.com/disaster_response/index.html

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Annex C – Information Management Best Practices Database Design: About.Com - databases.about.com/od/specificproducts/Database_Design.htm Best practices - Tips for Building a Sustainable Database (TechSoup) databases.about.com/od/specificproducts/Database_Design.htm Understanding GIS Data, Referencing Systems and Metadat, Harvard University www.gsd.harvard.edu/gis/manual/data_basics/index.htm Manage Data - Manage Hazards: Methods for development of an Urban Hazards Information Infrastructure in Windhoek (Namibia) www.itc.nl/library/Papers_2004/msc/gim/merson.pdf

Standards Development: Global Spatial Data Infrastructure (GSDI) - www.gsdi.org/ Federal Geographic Data Committee (U.S.) - www.fgdc.gov/

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Annex D – Sustainable Geospatial Tools & References General Reference: MapAction GIS Field Guide – www.mapaction.org/more-news/183-new-gis-field-guide.html Successful Response Starts with a Map – Good reading to build justification www.nap.edu/catalog.php?record_id=11793 Open GIS Consortium – Organization developing standards to allow for interoperability of participating geospatial software producers. www.opengeospatial.org/ Software: Open Source GIS – Links to low and no-cost GIS applications, - opensourcegis.org/ Wikipedia Open Source GIS Listing - en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_GIS_software Free GIS.org www.freegis.org/ OpenStreetMap - wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Main_Page Support: GIS Corps, volunteer organization with staff and resources to assist - www.giscorps.org/ ESRI Sustainable Development Team: www.esri.com/industries/environment/business/sustainable_development.html Models: Flood Models – Federal Emergency Management Agency (U.S.) www.fema.gov/plan/prevent/fhm/ot_main.shtm Loss Estimation Models – Federal Emergency Management Agency (U.S.) Official Site: http://www.fema.gov/plan/prevent/hazus/index.shtm Community Site: http://www.hazus.org

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Annex E – Community Building and Public Participation Resources Group Dynamics and Community Building www.community4me.com/communitybldg1.html Consensus Building Institute (MIT) - cbuilding.org/ Consensus Building – A short guide (MIT) web.mit.edu/publicdisputes/practice/cbh_ch1.html International Association of Public Participation iap2.org Community Based Disaster Management, UNCRD www.preventionweb.net/english/professional/trainings-events/edumaterials/v.php?id=3923 Community Based Disaster Risk Management (CBDRM) www.proventionconsortium.org/?pageid=47 Building a Disaster Resistant Community in Kathmandu: A Community Based Approach www.icomos.org/iiwc/seismic/Shrestha.pdf Cultivating Communities of Practice: A Guide to Managing Knowledge - Seven Principles for Cultivating Communities of Practice – Harvard Business Schoool http://hbswk.hbs.edu/archive/2855.html

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Annex F – Population Estimation and Vulnerability Resources Population Estimation: Tools and Methods for Estimating Populations at Risk from Natural Disasters and Complex Humanitarian Crises - National Research Council (U.S.) www.nap.edu/catalog.php?record_id=11895 Landscan - Oak Ridge national Laboratory - www.ornl.gov/sci/landscan/ Gridded Population of the World - Global Rural-Urban Mapping Project (Colombia University) - sedac.ciesin.columbia.edu/gpw/

Vulnerability: NOAA Coastal Service Center (U.S.) www.csc.noaa.gov/vata/intro2.html UN\ISDR - www.unisdr.org/eng/task%20force/tf-working-groups3-eng.htm CDERA - Caribbean hazard Mitigation Capacity Building program (CHAMP) www.cdera.org/projects/champ/mitiplcy/vulnerb.shtml Plan to Reduce the Vulnerability of School Buildings to Natural hazards in St. Kitts www.oas.org/cdmp/schools/sknplan.htm British Colombia (Canada) Hazard, Risk and Vulnerability Analysis Tool Kit www.proventionconsortium.org/themes/default/pdfs/CRA/BC_HRVA_2003_meth.pdf Guidelines for Community Vulnerability Analysis: An Approach for Pacific island Countries www.proventionconsortium.org/themes/default/pdfs/CRA/SPDRP1998_meth.pdf Cain, S. F. (2004). Rating rockfall hazard in Tennessee. Blacksburg, Va: University Libraries, Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University. scholar.lib.vt.edu/theses/available/etd-06082004-071701/

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Annex G – Risk Communication Resources Center for Risk Communication - www.centerforriskcommunication.com/ How Indigenous Knowledge Is Changing Natural Hazard Mitigation www.emergencymgmt.com/disaster/Indigenous-Knowledge-Natural-HazardMitigation.html Tropical Cyclone Warning Strategies (Australia) www.bom.gov.au/bmrc/pubs/tcguide/ch7/ch7_6.htm Risk Assessment Matrix - Texas State University www.studentorgs.txstate.edu/forms/risk_assessment_matrix.pdf Risk Assessment Matrix - Safety Management Services, Inc. - www.smsink.com/services_pha_matrix.html Statistics and natural hazard risk for 50 selected megacities - MunichRE www.munichre.com/app_resources/pdf/press/press_releases/legacy/pm_2005_01_11_01 _en.pdf Health Safety and Wellbeing, Griffith University www.griffith.edu.au/hrm/health_and_safety/ Living with Risk, A global review of disaster reduction initiatives (UN\ISDR) www.unisdr.org/eng/about_isdr/bd-lwr-2004-eng.htm UN-Habitat: Stages of a Disaster Risk Assessment process www.disasterassessment.org/section.asp?id=21 Famine Early Warning System, Food Insecurity Severity Scale Definitions http://www.fews.net/ml/en/info/pages/scale.aspx U.S. Geological Survey, National Earthquake Information Center, Prompt Assessment of Global Earthquakes for Response (PAGER) http://earthquake.usgs.gov/earthquakes/pager/

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Annex H – Geospatial Asset Management Resources Asset Management Primer – Federal Highway Administration (U.S.) www.fhwa.dot.gov/infrastructure/asstmgmt/amprimer.pdf Critical Infrastructure – (Provention Consortium) www.proventionconsortium.org/?pageid=49#critical Asset & Facility Management (ESRI) www.esri.com/industries/retail/business/asset_facility_management.html A Toolkit for Municipal Asset Management – (Municipal Finance Task Force) www.mftf.org/resources/index.cfm?fuseaction=throwpub&id=168 Asset Management - (Municipal Finance Task Force) http://www.mftf.org/resources/index.cfm?fuseaction=index&CatID=67&domainstartnod e=83 Review of Commercial Municipal Infrastructure Asset Management Systems http://itcon.org/data/works/att/2006_16.content.00290.pdf Asset-Based Community Development Institute: Northwestern, University http://www.abcdinstitute.org/

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