Building Urban Resilience workshop: Bangkok, Thailand

With support from the Rockefeller Foundation, the Global Disaster Preparedness Center (GDPC) and the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC) brought together more than 40 participants from eight Red Cross/Red Crescent (RC/RC) national societies as well as government counterpart agencies and partner organizations to share learning and insights on building disaster preparedness and resilience in urban settings in Asia. The workshop 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. Many of the points raised in the workshop were in line with recent studies on this topic in Asia and elsewhere by the RC/RC and other organizations. A summary list of these studies may be found in Attachment 1.

The workshop built on lessons from a related event held in Arusha, Tanzania in February 2013. will be followed by a third workshop in Latin America in September 2013. The workshop itself was captured live on Storify at http://storify.com/SM4Resilience/building-urban-resilience-july-30th-31st-2013. Since the results of the workshop are presented comprehensively there, this report focuses on highlighting key insights.