Academic Publications

The choice of scenario hazard events is a great challenge for many hazards and risk problems. In Tomorrow’s Cities, scenarios will be a critical part of our approach to exposing and understanding risk so it is an important area for us to consider.

Whereas extensive hazards like floods and small landslides happen frequently so the selection of scenarios is better informed by well recorded data, large earthquakes typically have nominal return periods of hundreds or even thousands of years. The selection of useful scenario earthquakes are critically important in Tomorrow’s Cities but poses a persistently difficult challenge for applied earthquake science.

John McCloskey, the Hub PI, is an earthquake scientist who has worked on the problem of earthquake recurrence for much of his career. The triggering of large earthquakes by tiny stress changes, the complexity of observed earthquake ruptures and the profound differences between successive earthquakes on the same fault, all indicate a strongly nonlinear process. Here, John argues that this nonlinearity means that even the most carefully selected scenario earthquakes is extremely unlikely to resemble the next damaging earthquake that will be experienced in any target area. The implications of this are amplified when cascading hazards complicate the impact pathway.

Here he provides a perspective on the choice of appropriate scenarios and how these challenges constrain the use to which scenarios might be put in the Hub. He concludes that illustrative scenario events, even though they will never happen, can facilitate a co-productive, multi-disciplinary process in which scientists can help expose the consequences of today’s decisions on tomorrow’s risk. This process provides a more nuanced, but not less important, role for earthquake scientists in supporting planning decisions.

The third DRR and gender mainstreaming dialogue with community leaders was hosted by the Nairobi Risk Hub on Wednesday the 3rd of February, 2021 on zoom platform. The community leaders were drawn from community-based organizations located in Kibera, Mathare, and Mukuru informal settlements.

The dialogues began with the researchers introducing the Multi-hazard project to the participants and walking them through interpretations of risks, hazards and disasters. After the introductory interactions, the researchers guided the rest of the conversation to cover the objectives of the dialogues. The discussions sought to understand disasters as perceived by the residents of the informal settlements, response, gender mainstreaming in CBOs and gaps that exacerbate vulnerability of the communities. Further, the representatives present made recommendations for that will enhance disaster risk reduction in the informal settlements.

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.

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 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.

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 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.

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 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.

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 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 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 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.

Leaving no one behind in Tomorrow’s Cities: Strengthening gender, intersectionality and social inclusion in the COVID-19 crisis and beyond

This comment identifies four mechanisms through which the COVID-19 crisis can be leveraged to enhance awareness and integration of marginalized groups and individuals into research and management of multi-hazard risk. The primary focus is on women and girls, but the analysis is intersectional and considers also marginality by disability, age, ethnicity and citizenship. The comment recommends:

• Ensuring equal representation and meaningful participation in disaster (including pandemic) management by women, non-binary and gender non-conforming persons and grass-roots communities.
• Application of sex-age, disability inclusive disaggregated data and targeted interventions for all vulnerable groups.
• Gender inclusive social protection and financing for economic response and recovery.
• Leaving no one behind in building back to a new normal.