Urban Risk Dialogues

With support from the Rockefeller Foundation, the Global Disaster Preparedness Center (GDPC) has been working with the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC) to host a series of regional workshops to share learning and insights on building disaster preparedness and resilience in urban settings in Africa, Asia, and the Americas. The workshops have looked at existing experience within the RC/RC and at where national societies want to be in the future in supporting communities to achieve resilience in urban settings.

Timeframe

December, 2012 – March, 2014.

Project Objectives

1. Advance dialogue, planning, and action within the RC/RC network on preparedness to respond to risks as a corner stone of urban resilience
2. Assess feasibility for a common approach to support communities through RC/RC to self-organize preparedness and resilience initiatives

Project partners

The GDPC has worked closely with the IFRC to plan and organize the three regional workshops under the project. In all more than 39 Red Cross Red Crescent national soctiies participated in the workshops. In addition a variety of representatives from national governments, Arup, ASEAN, ECHO, OFDA, and UN-ISDR also participated in the workshops.

Target Audience

Red Cross and Red Crescent practitioners in the field of disaster preparedness coming from both headquarters units and urban branches as well as their government and international partners.

Results

The results from each of the workshops:

• Africa workshop: Arusha, Tanzania – Feb 2013
• Asia workshop: Bangkok, Thailand – July 2013
• Americas workshop: Panama City, Panama – Sept 2013

In addition the IFRC held a further series of workshops building on the same concept and approach:

• Kampala, Uganda – July 2013
• Tbilisi, Georgia – September 2013
• Middle East and North Africa: Beirut, Lebanon – December 2013
• Tehran, Iran – January 2014

The GDPC also hosted a workshop on Scaling Up Urban & Community Resilience in March 2014 to gather further insight on this topic.

Scoping study: As a final deliverable under the project, the GDPC also developed a Scoping Study to further explore the feaisibility for scaling up efforts on community resilience in cities globally.

Follow-up Plans

Now that the project activities have been completed, the GDPC is now in the process of developing plans for a follow-un urban resilience campaign in collaboration with the IFRC and other partners within the Red Cross Red Crescent network as well as external partners.