Managing Urban Disaster Risk. Analysis and Adaptation Frameworks for Integrated Settlement Development Programming for the Urban Poor

The urban poor are particularly vulnerable to natural disasters such as earthquakes, floods, landslides, windstorms, volcanic eruptions, wild fires, water surges and droughts, as their settlements are often located on marginal land and have sub-standard housing and infrastructure. Currently, more than one billion people worldwide live in “slums”. Thus, increasing attention has been given to the need to reduce disaster risk through development work so as to bring about poverty reduction. Moreover, one of the Millennium Development Goals is to achieve a significant improvement in the lives of at least 100 million slum dwellers by 2020.

This book provides an understanding of the challenges of increasing risk and its impact on the living conditions of the urban poor, as well as suggesting new conceptual and strategic approaches to facing those challenges. A central question is how can disaster risk management be properly integrated into urban development programming? From here, three areas are researched: first, the existing linkages between disasters and building and planning practices relating to low-income settlements; second, the current relationship between the working fields of disaster risk management and territorial planning; and third, the actual possibilities for overcoming existing challenges and gaps, in order to increase the potential of settlement development programming to reduce and transfer, or share, risk. The research methodology combines case studies, grounded theory and systems analysis. El Salvador, which is located in one of the most disaster-prone regions in the world, was the focus country for the cases studies, comprising four aid programmes implemented in 15 disaster-prone slum communities.
Urban development and related practices are not only affected by disasters but also are one of their main causes. So far, neither urban development actors nor professionals have addressed this effectively. Therefore, to achieve holistic and thus sustainable disaster risk management, an “Analysis and Integration Model” is elaborated, based on seven strategies combined with five measures to tackle disaster risk. The seven strategies are:

· direct stand-alone disaster risk management;
· direct integrated disaster risk management;
· programmatic mainstreaming of disaster risk management;
· organizational mainstreaming;
· internal mainstreaming;
· synergy creation; and
· educational mainstreaming of disaster risk management.

In the same context, the measures to tackle disaster risk are prevention, mitigation, preparedness, risk financing (which aims to increase the capacity of sharing risk so as to establish a “security system”) and stand-by for recovery (which aims to increase the capacity to establish appropriate recovery mechanisms and structures for households, communities and/or institutions that are accessible after a potential hazard/disaster). This edition also includes several papers previously published by the author, and a CD with an electronic version of the book.