Academic Publications

The emergence of Covid-19 in Ecuador: An approach from disaster risk management and its relation with the Tomorrow’s Cities Hub

In Ecuador different actions have been seen in relation to the health emergency caused by Covid-19. This article analyses the impact of the pandemic and proposes what lessons can be learned and how they can be implemented into the country’s disaster risk reduction planning.

The effects of the Coronavirus or COVID-19 have been very apparent as people, politics, and economics of the world have been brought down to a grinding halt. Almost all of the governments around the globe are grappling to contain the spread of the virus, and the government of Nepal is not an exception. A glimmer of hope in this lockdown is on the skills of global medical science. We all believe that sooner or later medical science will guide us back to a post-pandemic society. However, while dealing with it at present, it has laid bare the capacity of our government and other institutions which are involved in risk management.

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.

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.

Covid-19 has changed the context for working and will likely change the local and policy landscape for the Tomorrow’s Cities Hub – it has and will have a major relevance for our collective work and its legacy.

In this document we outline the main aims for Tomorrow’s Cities and map out five entry points for working with Covid-19. These offer initial thoughts on how Covid-19 might be considered in our collective work, as well as opportunities for contributing to policy or practice on Covid-19 within broader processes of equitable resilience building.

Discussion does not seek to cover all the areas of relevance that disaster risk management, crisis management, resilience or transformative action can bring (this is no less important but the focus for another conversation!). The aim here is to identify the specific contribution of Tomorrow’s Cities Hub given focus by our:

Mission: To reduce disaster risk for the poor in tomorrow’s cities

and

Aim: To catalyse a transition from crisis management to multi-hazard risk-informed urban planning and decision-making

Cevizlibağ Metrobus Overpass has a very important place in Istanbul transportation due to its high pedestrian density and its location on the main road with heavy vehicle traffic. Damage to the Cevizlibağ overpass in a possible earthquake may block the traffic of Istanbul and prevent the aid teams from reaching the earthquake victims. If it collapses in an earthquake while the density of people is high on it, it may cause many casualties. For this reason, this overpass should be designed in such a way that it will not be damaged even in the biggest possible earthquake. Also, there are 4 stairs on the overpass and a platform with turnstiles for Metrobus passes (Figure 2).

This study aims to determine the dynamic (Modal parameters such as modal frequencies and mode shapes) and static properties (Geometry and material properties) of the Cevizlibağ Overpass and to examine the earthquake performance. In this context, the building was analyzed under the earthquake levels defined in the 2018 Turkish Earthquake Code. As a result of these analyzes, the total shear force capacity of the structure and the amount of shear force demanded from the structure were calculated using different earthquake levels.

This is the first report coming out of Work Package 1: Theme 2 (Governance and Institutions) for the Tomorrow’s Cities GCRF Hub in Kathmandu city. It constitutes a qualitative institutional mapping of formal and informal organisations and key stakeholders involved in DRR governance in Kathmandu, across all scales from national to local. This report was finalised shortly following the Kathmandu City Hub Launch on Friday 28th February 2020. It draws on fieldwork constituting a first round of expert interviews and literature review conducted by Dilli Poudel from July-December 2019. It also builds on the Khokana field report released by SIAS in July 2019. The data contained in this report (including the Appendices) should be considered a work in progress; they will be built upon in subsequent rounds of fieldwork and used to refine research questions going forward.

Is Tomorrow’s Cities fit for the 2030 agenda?

The 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, adopted by all United Nations Member States in 2015, provides a shared blueprint for peace and prosperity for people and the planet, now and into the future.

It brings together the ambition of several agreements, some of which are particularly relevant to disaster risk reduction.

Science requires partnerships to help bring solutions to address global challenges—but these can take many forms. This article  explores how well Tomorrow’s Cities is meeting some particular partnership challenges presented by the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development.