Academic Publications

Incirli Pedestrian bridge links the Bakirköy and Bahçelievler districts of Istanbul by crossing over the D100 highway and being exposed to heavy pedestrian traffic in peak-hours, since it is the only way to reach the Metrobus line for the people live in the neighboring area. The D100 is a state road with a total of 1852 km length, which extends from Kapıkule border crossing in Western Turkey to the Gürbulak border crossing point at Eastern Turkey. The highway has particular importance to Istanbul since it is one of the largest and busiest highways in the city. In the case of an emergency, D100 will be one of the most used alternatives to run efficient logistics operations in the city. Thus, studying the structural safety of pedestrian bridges over the D100 highway during earthquakes is very important, and this is the objective of this study. Towards this objective, the seismic safety of one of such bridges, the Incirli pedestrian bridge is studied by using vibration measurements, field inspections, a measurement-calibrated
analytical model, and a site-specific design-spectra based analysis. The transfer matrix formulation is used to derive the properties of an equivalent SDOF structure. The elastic design spectra used is based on the latest Turkish seismic design code for the location, the TSC2018. Using the measured natural frequency of the structure and the elastic design spectra, the earthquake forces that are expected under several scenario earthquakes with different return periods are calculated, and the stress levels at the most critical sections of vertical structural elements are evaluated. It is determined that, under the expected large Istanbul earthquake, the bridge is unsafe in its longitudinal direction, but safe in its transverse direction.

Grandparents in earthquake-prone Chile teach children to identify load-bearing walls, and the Philippines has developed an internationally respected disaster management system. Do such low-cost, social adaptations increase community resilience to earthquakes, or are poorer countries forever doomed to large death tolls in small earthquakes? We attempt to answer this question by quantifying the vulnerability of exposed populations to a set of earthquakes recorded in the USGS PAGER system. We first remove the effect of strong shaking by statistically modelling published mortality, shaking intensity and population exposure data; unexplained variance from this purely physical model is dominated by, and its systematics therefore illuminate, the contribution of socio-economic factors to increasing earthquake mortality. We find that this variance partitions countries in terms of basic socio-economic measures and allows the definition of an Earthquake Vulnerability Index, which identifies both anomalously resilient and anomalously vulnerable countries. Unsurprisingly, wealthy countries perform well, while in general poor countries are more vulnerable. However some low-GDP countries rival even the richest in their ability to resist shaking, suggesting that social and political will can increase resilience. Until expensive engineering solutions become more universally available, the objective targeting of resources at relatively low-cost interventions might help reverse the trend of increasing mortality in earthquakes.

La Secretaría General de Planificación, en coordinación con el Instituto Metropolitano de Planificación Urbana, el Instituto de la Ciudad y la Secretaría de Territorio, Hábitat y Vivienda, se encuentra elaborando el Plan Metropolitano de Desarrollo y Ordenamiento Territorial (PMDOT) 2020-2030.

El PMDOT se concibe como el instrumento que contiene las directrices principales de la ciudad, con el fin de ordenar, compatibilizar y armonizar las decisiones estratégicas de desarrollo respecto a los asentamientos humanos, las actividades económico-productivas y el manejo de los recursos naturales en función de las cualidades territoriales. Este plan se construye o actualiza con cada nuevo gobierno municipal, es decir, cada 4 años.

Las primeras dos fases de construcción del plan, el diagnóstico y la propuesta, han sido concluidas. En la actualidad se está desarrollando el modelo de gestión, el cual incluye la transversalización de un enfoque de derechos humanos a sus políticas orientadoras, para lo cual, se toma en cuenta a los grupos de atención prioritaria y vulnerabilidad del Distrito Metropolitano de Quito (DMQ)1.

Para la transversalización del enfoque de derechos, la Secretaría General de Planificación ha solicitado el apoyo técnico del Centro Ciudades del Mañana (Tomorrow’s Cities – https://tomorrowscities.org/), el cual tiene como objetivo proporcionar apoyo científico para reducir el riesgo de desastres por amenazas naturales de las comunidades con vulnerabilidades económicas y sociales por medio del fortalecimiento de capacidades a través de la ciencia, la historia y el arte, buscando impulsar un accionar participativo de los distintos actores relacionados a la gestión territorial, y contribuir así a un adecuado desarrollo sostenible.

En función de ello, entre los equipos del Centro y la Secretaría General de Planificación, desde el mes de agosto se mantuvieron varias reuniones en las cuales se revisaron diversos documentos de trabajo, presentaciones, indicadores, y demás insumos del PMDOT, los diagnósticos de la situación actual de la ciudad y principalmente la situación de los grupos de atención prioritaria y vulnerabilidad. Con esta base, se elaboró una metodología de trabajo entre los meses de septiembre y noviembre del 2020, mismo que fue socializado al Consejo de Protección de Derechos y sus instituciones afines. El plan, sus ejes, programas, estrategias operativas, y demás componentes, fueron socializados a los representantes de los grupos de atención prioritaria una semana antes de los talleres. Los talleres se realizaron los días 16 y 17 de diciembre de 2020.

The second community dialogue on Disaster Risk Reduction (DRR) was hosted by The Nairobi Risk Hub on the 26th of November, 2020. The dialogue brought together CBO leaders from Mukuru, Korogocho, and Mathare Valley, as well as researchers from The Nairobi Risk Hub.

Five out of the seven CBO v representatives present, were from Mukuru SPA, which is the study area of the project. The dialogue is part of a series that seeks to establish community led evidence base on hazards in the informal settlements, their drivers, institutional roots and feasible solutions.

The Nairobi Urban Risk Hub hosted the first community dialogues on the 10th of November, 2020. The first in a 4-part series of dialogues. The dialogues are intended to bring together Community Based Organizations (CBO) leadership and the researchers at the Nairobi Hub.

The two Review and Learning Workshops of the Quito Hub took place on the 4th and 11th September 2020. These workshops aimed at analysing and discussing the challenges and opportunities of our work until now, and at learning relevant lessons to guide our future work.

During Workshop 1, the Quito Hub members presented their research progress across themes and subthemes. They revealed the interdisciplinary and collaborative nature of this research, the connections established between the humanities, social, and physical sciences, and the strong interactions and linkages between the Quito Hub members from Ecuador and the UK.

Workshop 2 aimed at discussing three important topics for the Quito Hub, including our impact agenda in relation to the Theory of Change (TOC), the role of interdisciplinarity in our work, and the equitable partnerships within and outside the Quito Hub. Different relevant points for the Quito Hub emerged from the discussion, such as: the importance of reflexivity; the ethical dilemma and the political nature of our research; the importance of co-produced knowledge; the challenges and opportunities of interdisciplinarity; the impacts of Covid-19 pandemic on our work and research participants; the opportunities of the TOC to guide our research; the role of curiosity and openness; the challenges of formal and informal communication; the role of hierarchies and power in our interactions; the need to make visible the hidden work; and the need to talk about gender.

From these points, we have identified different forms of actionable learning that can support to Quito Hub moving forward its research agenda, as outlined in the report.

Istanbul, landslides are the first largest disaster in terms of the number of incidents and the second-largest natural disaster after earthquakes in terms of affected houses. There were 1,153 landslides reported in Istanbul, 908 earth sliding, and 245 rockfalls. The social and economic losses of landslides can be reduced by effective planning and management. These approaches can be summarized as follows.
a) Limiting residential areas in places at high risk of landslides
b) Compliance with regulations on excavation, filling, landscaping, and building
construction
c) Monitoring of groundwater level, slope surfaces, and structures in risky areas
with measuring devices to prevent or control landslides.
d) Development of early warning systems.
This report summarizes the research escapades and investigates the characteristics of past landslides, especially in Istanbul. For this purpose, in the second part of the report, landslide prediction methods and the factor of safety are explained. In the third section, landslide risk assessment methods are discussed. In the fourth chapter, multi-hazard risks are highlighted and the importance of landslides in multi-hazard risks is discussed. The fifth chapter includes past research on disaster risk management. In the sixth section, the landslide hazard of Istanbul is reviewed separately for 14 regions. The results obtained in this report are summarized and discussed in the conclusion section.

The Tomorrow’s Cities Safeguarding Policy sets out our approach to preventing harm caused to any person as a result of our activities. This includes:

• An overview of what safeguarding means in the context of our work
• Principles and guiding questions for anticipating, mitigating and addressing harm
• Individual and organisational responsibilities
• Governance and reporting procedures

This is a living document and will be updated throughout the lifetime of the Hub in response to new understandings of risk, harm and vulnerability, as well as ways in which these can be more effectively and equitably anticipated, mitigated and addressed.

We are currently undergoing Hub-wide and City-specific engagement on this policy in order to set out contextually relevant ways in which to strengthen our approach. As a result, we anticipate a significant update to this policy in January 2021.

This policy has been written by Dave Bell, with support and consultation from Richard Powell (Director of Safe for Children), Sam Staddon (Chair of the Geosciences Research Ethics and Integrity Committee, University of Edinburgh) and Clara Caila (Deputy Director of the School of Health in Social Science Research Ethics and Integrity, University of Edinburgh).

Reporting concerns

If someone is at immediate risk of harm, and it is safe for you to do so, you should immediately call an appropriate local service – e.g. emergency services (police and/or ambulance) and/or building security – and consider seeking help from others to intervene. If there is no immediate risk of harm, or the risk has passed, you should report the concern to one of the following contacts (as appropriate):

– Eliane Reid – Hub Operations Manager (via manager@tomorrowscities.org)
– Dave Bell – Hub Knowledge Exchange and Monitoring Specialist (via monitoring@tomorrowscitie.org)

You can also report using this online form – which allows you to report anonymously, if you wish. No concern is too small to report.

This report documents and discusses the urbanization trend, spatial transition, major drivers of urban change, and existing institutional mechanisms of urban development in Nepal , one of the top ten fastest urbanizing countries in the world. Particularly, it reflects on the gaps and challenges for urban governance in Nepal and focuses on Kathmandu Valley, the “hub” of urbanization in Nepal. The urban population growth rate in Nepal almost doubled from 3.6% in 1991 to 6.5% in 2001, and the number of urban centers increased from 58 in 2013 to 293 in 2017. The review shows the transition of Nepal from predominantly rural to an emerging urban economy is primarily the result of the governmental decisions that merged rural administrative units and designated them as municipalities, administratively the urban units of Nepal. Rural to urban migration is another important factor driving urban growth in Nepal. Unplanned land use, shrinking open spaces, haphazard construction, and poor services have become major urban features of Nepal, which resemble the growth of Kathmandu Valley.

Kathmandu Valley, with an estimated population of 2.54 million, is growing at 6.5% per year, indicating one of the fastest-growing metropolitan areas in South Asia. Haphazard and unplanned urbanization of the valley have degraded the urban environment, increased urban poverty, and exposed the growing urban population to multi-hazard risk. Aiming to balance urban development, develop disaster-resilient cities and enhance urban resilience, the government has formulated the urban development strategy and declared new programs for the development of emerging urban centers and “smart” cities in the valley. However, such centrallyplanned infrastructure development activities lack coordination and contradict the formal policy intentions, and are facing resistances in some places, rendering their implementation uncertain. The majority of the urban population lacks resiliency and the government lacks institutional and financial capacities and coordination crucial for undertaking inclusive, equitable, and resilient urban development. The current constitutional provision that restrains the government from imposing any kind of restriction on the use of private property has come up as an additional impediment to urban governance in Nepal and thus making urban areas increasingly disasterprone and the urban population, primarily the urban poor, vulnerable to multiple hazards. Kathmandu Valley has become an evidence of these processes and their ramifications. The report has concluded by providing key insights that can be useful in making tomorrow’s cities inclusive, equitable, and resilient.

Air quality in cities is influenced not only by emissions and chemical transformations but also by the physical state of the atmosphere which varies both temporally and spatially. Increasingly, tall buildings (TB) are common features of the urban landscape, yet their impact on urban air flow and dispersion is not well understood, and their effects are not appropriately captured in parameterisation schemes. Here, hardware models of areas within two global mega-cities (London and Beijing) are used to analyse the impact of TB on flow and transport in isolated and cluster settings. Results show that TB generate strong updrafts and downdrafts that affect street-level flow fields. Velocity differences do not decay monotonically with distance from the TB, especially in the near-wake region where the flow is characterised by recirculating winds and jets. Lateral distance from an isolated TB centreline is crucial, and flow is still strongly impacted at longitudinal distances of several TB heights. Evaluation of a wake-flow scheme (ADMS– Build) in the isolated TB case indicates important characteristics are not captured. There is better agreement for a slender, shorter TB than a taller non-cuboidal TB. Better prediction of flow occurs horizontally further away and vertically further from the surface. TB clusters modify the shape of pollutant plumes. Strong updrafts generated by the overlapping wakes of TB clusters lift pollutants out of the canopy, causing a much deeper tracer plume in the lee of the cluster, and an elevated plume centreline with maximum concentrations around the TB mean height. Enhanced vertical spread of the pollutants in the near-wake of the cluster results in overall lower maximum concentrations, but higher concentrations above the mean TB height. These results have important implications for interpreting observations in areas with TB. Using real world ceilometer observations in two mega-cities (Beijing and Paris), we assess the diurnal seasonal variability of the urban boundary layer and evaluate a mixed layer height (MLH) empirical model with parameters derived from a third mega-city (London). The MLH model works well in central Beijing but less well in suburban Paris. The variability of the physical meteorology across different vertical scales discussed in this paper provides additional context for interpreting air quality observations.

This report presents the proceedings and reflections of the ‘Future Resilient Nairobi’ Workshop held virtually on the 7th of August 2020. The workshop, the first in a series of workshops under the Nairobi Risk Hub, provided an opportunity for city stakeholders to create a shared vision of ‘Future Resilient Nairobi’.

The overall objective of the workshop was to facilitate key in-city policy actors in the identification of a shared vision for a future resilient Nairobi. This involved the identification of potential challenges and opportunities towards building resilience for the urban poor and; establishing the role of science in integrating risk management in urban planning and development processes in Nairobi. Section 3 below provides a brief description of the context of risk and development in Nairobi. This is followed by a description of the methodology and detailed accounts of the workshop findings. Lastly, the report concludes by providing reflections on the workshop methodology and implications for the Nairobi Risk Hub.

The COVID-19 pandemic has revealed worldwide the multi-dimensional vulnerability of contemporary societies under the neoliberal logic. In a previous and insightful commentary, our colleagues from FLACSO Ecuador highlighted the failure of national land use planning and policies as the baseline condition for the weak national response to COVID-19 in Ecuador and for the acceleration of impacts on vulnerable people. This article will complement the aforementioned commentary with a preliminary contextualization of the pandemic in Ecuador, to account for structural socioeconomic and political problems of the country and to reflect on its current and future linkages with disaster risk reduction in Quito.

The Politics of Uncertainty: Practical Challenges for Transformative Action is an Open Access book exploring the theme of uncertainty in the science-society nexus.

This chapter, written by Tomorrow’s Cities Co-Directors Mark Pelling and John McCloskey, with Detlef Müller-Mahn, explores Disasters, Humanitarianism and Emergencies. Long-standing research on disaster risk has tended to focus on physical science and directly connected and observable cause and effect between hazard and impact. More recently, work has extended into questions of complex causation and social construction, where cause and effect are disarticulated over space and time and coloured by an observer’s viewpoint and perception. This has drawn in multidisciplinary and interdisciplinary approaches, including recognition of local or traditional knowledge. The chapter explores this transition and the ways in which the search for a more complete understanding of risk production and human action has brought both increased understanding and greater uncertainty to those who seek to use science for action. By drawing together viewpoints from social and physical science perspectives the chapter identifies four fundamental properties of knowledge production in the context of disaster risk and international development: (1) uncertainty is prevalent throughout disaster research; (2) as knowledge has grown, so awareness of the uncertainties that constrain this knowledge has also grown; (3) uncertainties are likely to remain into the future and so must be embraced; and (4) managing the presentation of uncertainty is a challenge for scientists working with policy-makers and the public, who look to science to reduce uncertainty.

The Politics of Uncertainty book, which can be found in full here, is a result of an international academic symposium of the same title, organised by the STEPS Centre and held at the Institute of Development Studies in the UK.

The niche of the Tomorrow’s Cities project lies in the fact that 60 percent of the area that is expected to be urban by 2030 is yet to be built. Kathmandu is one of the fastest-growing metropolitan areas in the South Asia region and the most critical place within Nepal that is facing unprecedented challenges –ramifications of unplanned development and urban sprawl. Kathmandu’s core city can no longer accommodate population or infrastructural expansion and therefore, the urban settlements have slowly begun to spread on the last remaining agricultural lands on the peripheral areas of the core city. With the new publicly elected representatives at the local level, after more than two decades, the development planning has been handed down to these local units. However, there also exist overlapping structures in the federal government that employ federal mandates of city planning. Within the Kathmandu context, the development plans of both the municipal government and the federal government play out in these last remaining green spaces of the valley. Hence, the different city actors need to agree on a vision of what a resilient Kathmandu would look like.

Workshop methods with participatory adult learning tools were employed to bring together key city policy actors and understand (differing) visions of resilient Kathmandu. Through a series of sessions, the participants agreed on a vision where a capacitated municipal government was the precondition for a resilient city. Better technical knowledge of the municipal staff, participatory and inclusive planning, community cohesion, and strong social networks were the characteristics of the high capacity of municipal government that enhanced city resilience. Whereas, redundant policies and institutional structure at different tiers of government, low capacity of human resources at the municipal offices impeded the desired vision of the resilient city. The participants agreed on the positive role science can play in capacitating the municipal government on participatory and evidence-based decision making.

While the municipal government is one of the key actors, there are other structures within different tiers of government that can enhance/undermine the city resilience. Taking the municipal authority as a departure point, the Tomorrow’s Cities project can inquire on the roles and relationship of the municipal government with the community it governs, the federal policies/institutions that it is regulated by and its relationship with other potential external influencers like the private sector and donor agencies. And hence understand how the urbanization process will unfold (converge or depart from the old ways) in the new federal system of governance.

The COVID-19 pandemic presents unique challenges to the research community beyond the devastating impacts to livelihoods and economies across the globe. Most researchers are currently struggling to develop adaptive measures to facilitate the continuity of ongoing research activities, and at the same time identify the relatable opportunities from the pandemic.

The Nairobi Risk Hub, part of the broader Tomorrow’s Cities research project, is one of numerous donor funded research projects experiencing this adjustment. The UKRI Global Challenges Research Fund (GCRF) funded project is expected to undertake interdisciplinary research and inform disaster management in rapidly developing cities: Nairobi, Kathmandu, Istanbul and Quito. The vision of the Nairobi Risk Hub is specifically to generate research evidence geared towards helping the city of Nairobi move from crisis/emergency response to integrated, proactive urban planning to enhance disaster risk preparedness and management. The research puts specific focus on floods and fires as the most prevalent hazards in Nairobi, especially within the informal settlements, as well as other cascading hazards that affect the wellbeing of the residents. The COVID-19 pandemic thus becomes a research opportunity for the hub, as well as a bottleneck to the planned research activities designed to be achieved through the application of multidisciplinary research to establish an integrated evidence base on the city’s leading risks and hazards, their drivers, institutional structures, and feasible disaster reduction measures that support pro-poor action planning.

The Nairobi Risk Hub plans involve a very ambitious research and policy action plan and learning agenda. More specifically, the critical path for the hub is premised on locally grounded research involving community engagements, ground measurements, and leveraging key insights to the Nairobi city-wide policy planning. This critical path enables the hub’s work to directly and indirectly interact with the COVID-19 management processes including the impacts on research plans, but also presents new opportunities to inform strategic policy responses to the pandemic. Nairobi is one of Africa’s main economic hubs with a large attraction of international trade and activities, but faced with numerous social, economic, environmental, and urban risk-related challenges that constrain the city’s growth and resilience. Ultimately, understanding how the hub is reorganising itself and adopting to the ensuing COVID-19 related challenges and opportunities is an important element in the Monitoring, Evaluation and Learning (MEL) framework. This article outlines the experiences of the Nairobi Risk Hub in this regard. The article also draws from the ongoing COVID-19 discussions and communications taking place at the overall Hub level on mapping out the entry points for working within the context of COVID-19.

We are living in unprecedented times due to the Covid-19 pandemic, an unparalleled disaster in many respects. At the time of writing this article (April 27, 2020), almost three million people have been infected and more than 200,000 people have died from Covid-19 related infections across the world. In Kenya, there are 398 confirmed cases of infection and 14 deaths. Global Prediction models suggest grim but largely uncertain future scenarios. So far, the disaster has resulted in the unprecedented overstretch of global health systems and the conscious closure of social and economic systems by nation states to prevent the further spread of the catastrophe. The outcome has been devastating: Millions of people have lost their jobs or taken pay-cuts; small-to-medium-to-large scale businesses across the world face imminent collapse; education, training and research plans (like our own under the Rights and Resilience program) have been significantly disrupted, and hundreds of thousands of families are grieving the loss of loved ones, whom for precautionary reasons cannot give them usual decent sendoff. With each country investing most focus and resources in managing the crisis within their borders, international humanitarian responses as we know them are severely disrupted. Still, the World Health Organization (WHO) has been at the forefront in helping nations to deal with the crises, particularly in providing much-needed knowledge in the form of health guidelines to manage the outbreak. This, despite notable criticism from the President of the USA for alleged failure to curtail the spread of the pandemic.

A major response by governments across the world has been partial to total “lockdowns” aimed at preventing further human-to-human transmission of infections. Simply put, a “lockdown” demands that people minimize or completely stop outdoor activities. By and large, this response appears to be an effective way of minimizing risk of infection, if reports of trends in many counties that were initially severely hit such as China and South Korea are anything to go by. It is also in line with WHO’s call for social and physical distancing as one of the most effective ways of minimizing the spread of the virus. But while millions of people have heeded this call, an equally vast number of people, particularly in the so-called developing countries, have defied it. For instance, on March 24, 2020 one of Kenya’s most widely read newspapers, the Daily Nation, reported in bold: “It’s business as usual as Kenyans snub stay home orders.” The result has been cat-and-mouse type chases between law enforcers and the people, leading to loss of lives, injuries and a plethora of prosecutions. On its part, the government has emphasized that either people observe the strict restrictions or face the full force of the law!

But why would citizens risk their lives and the lives of others by being out of their abode in the face of a deadly virus? Critical disaster studies may help us understand this conundrum.