Urban Risk Identification - Abstract

Cities have become the champions of strategies for development by fostering greater productivity, opportunities, and quality of life (UN Habitat, 2016). They’re often encouraged to take initiatives to fill in gaps that national governments cannot, particularly in face of global challenges like climate change, environmental degradation, or poverty and inequality. The UN’s Habitat II in 1996 had already foreseen governments in the future as enablers of strategies much more than providers (UN Habitat, 2016).

Pelling et al. (2017) hold that the successful implementation of the Sendai Framework for DRR (SFDRR) in cities increasingly depends on the actions taken to manage the risks that accumulate in them. In Nigeria, for example, governors of four major cities joined the DFID-funded Nigerian Infrastructure Advisory Facility in 2016 to create the Nigerian Resilient Cities Network, an NGO now integrated by a total of eight cities in the country. The network seeks to advance resilience thinking across the country, and promote reflection and innovation in applying resilience to the political-economic context of Nigeria (100 Resilient Cities, 2017). It also integrates academia into its work by partnering with a local university to develop resilience-themed courses targeted at municipal employees in Nigeria.

In Africa, corrupt and unstable political and economic systems have generated high levels of poverty and inequality, consequently turning it into the most vulnerable world region to disasters (WEF, 2017). The spectrum of risks in Sub-Saharan cities is outlined by extensive risks (low-severity, high-frequency hazards and disasters like localized floods and landslides) and intensive risks (high-severity, low-frequency disasters).

Figure 5: Damage due to extensive and intensive disaster events since 1990 in a sample of 65 countries and 2 states (Source: UNISDR, 2015)