The Urban Risk Assessment (URA) is a framework for assessing disaster and climate risk in cities based on three pillars: a hazard impact assessment, an institutional assessment, and a socioeconomic assessment. The URA can be applied flexibly based on a city's available financial resources, available data, and institutional capacity.

This book presents a framework, the Urban Risk Assessment, for assessing disaster and climate risk in cities which is intended to assist in decision-making, urban planning, and designing risk management programs. The approach seeks to strengthen coherence and consensus within and across cities in understanding and planning for risk from natural disasters and climate change. The target audience for this book includes policy makers, urban practitioners and technical staff, and international organizations. The Urban Risk Assessment is a flexible approach based on three reinforcing pillars that collectively contribute to the understanding of urban risk: a hazard impact assessment, an institutional assessment, and a socioeconomic assessment. The URA is designed to allow flexibility in how it is applied dependent on available financial resources, available data relating to hazards and its population, and institutional capacity of a given city. Based on the identified needs and priorities, city governments can select the most appropriate level of risk assessment. Chapters 1 and 2 of the book are aimed at policy makers with information on why and how to invest in measures that strengthen the understanding of urban risk; Chapter 1 provides background information on the growing importance of disaster and climate risk management strategies at the city level and Chapter 2 provides guidance on how to operationalize and mainstream the Urban Risk Assessment with ongoing urban management and development activities. Chapters 3 and 4 are aimed at practitioners, and provide details on the conceptual approach, components, uses, and monitoring requirements for carrying out an Urban Risk Assessment.

The rapid and oft en unplanned expansion of cities is exposing more people and economic assets to the risk of disasters and the effects of climate change. For city governments, increased climate variability imposes additional challenges to effective urban management and the delivery of key services, while for residents it increasingly affects their lives and livelihoods due to more frequent floods, landslides, heat waves, droughts, and fires. There is an urgent need for cities to consider disaster and climate change by streamlining assessments of related risks in their planning and management as well as delivery of services. This paper proposes a framework for carrying out urban risk assessment, and seeks to strengthen coherence and consensus in how cities can plan for natural disasters and climate change. The Urban Risk Assessment (URA) was developed by drawing on lessons from existing efforts to assess risk in cities as well as urban planning literature. It was vetted through consultation and collaboration with international development agencies, the public and private sectors, and nongovernmental organizations. It minimizes duplicative efforts, and brings convergence to related work undertaken by the World Bank and other key partners. The target audience for this report includes: (1) decision makers such as city managers, mayors, and those involved in developing national and local policies related to urban development; (2) urban practitioners and technical staff at the municipal, regional, and national levels; and (3) international organizations. The assessment methodology focuses on three reinforcing pillars that collectively contribute to understanding urban risk: a hazard impact assessment, an institutional assessment, and a socioeconomic assessment. The URA allows flexibility in how it is applied, depending on available financial resources, available data relating to hazards and its population, and institutional capacity of a given city. Through the URA's sequencing, which is linked to complexity and required investment, city managers may select subcomponents from each pillar that individually and collectively enhance the understanding of urban risk.

A study on urban risk and resettlement programs in the Global South in the era of climate change. Environmental changes impact everyone, but the burden is especially heavy upon the lives and livelihoods of the urban poor and those living in informal settlements. In an effort to reduce urban residents' exposure to climate change and natural disasters, resettlement programs are becoming widespread across the Global South. Yet, while resettlement may reduce a region's future climate-related disaster risk, it can also often increase poverty and vulnerability. This volume collates the findings from a research project that examined urban areas across the globe, including case studies from India, Uganda, Peru, Colombia, Mexico, Cambodia, and the Philippines. The book offers a unique approach to resettlement, providing an opportunity for urban planners to re-think how disaster risk management can better address the accumulation of urban risks in the era of climate change.

Resilience and Urban Risk Management presents the latest progress made in designing resilient towns, and identifies leads to be explored for attaining the objective of systematically integrating risks into urban environments The aim of the book is to provide guidance in designing and planning future cities, and to create a new form of risk manageme

This book focuses on monitoring and assessing various environmental processes in Tunisia using state-of-the-art remote sensing and GIS technologies. In addition to addressing the diversity of Tunisian landscapes and providing spatial analysis of natural, cultivated and urbanized environments. It presents and discusses several case studies on integrated RS / GIS approaches for mapping, modeling, monitoring and evaluation. Moreover, in this volume authored by experts in the topic from Tunisia and other countries, authors assess the agro-environmental applications from Tunisia and offer different methods and applications to environmental processes and risks including drought, degradation, flood, planning, Yield estimation, dust storm detection, dry land vulnerability, wetland dynamics and others. The material presented here will help decision-makers plan sustainable landscape and agricultural management policies that preserve biodiversity and contribute to achieving sustainability goals and for researchers, it will expose methodological approaches used in different fields of research. Graduate students and Practionioner engineers working in the field of RS/GIS will also benefit from the book. The book ends with a set of conclusions and recommendations to support researchers underscoring the need for further research in this area.

This book is the second in a series that examines how geographic information te- nologies (GIT) are being implemented to improve our understanding of a variety of hazard and disaster situations. The main types of technologies covered under the umbrella of GIT, as used in this volume, are geographic information systems, remote sensing (not including ground-penetrating or underwater systems), and global po- tioning systems. Our focus is on urban areas, broadly de ned in order to encompass rapidly growing and densely populated areas that may not be considered “urban” in the conventional sense. The material presented here is also unabashedly applied – our goal is to provide GIT tools to those seeking more ef cient ways to respond to, recover from, mitigate, prevent, and/or model hazard and disaster events in urban settings. Therefore, this book was created not only with our colleagues in the academic world in mind, but also for hazards professionals and practitioners. We also believe graduate students will nd the material presented here of interest, as may upper division undergraduate students.

Climate Change and Cities bridges science-to-action for climate change adaptation and mitigation efforts in cities around the world.

Earthquakes affecting urban areas can lead to catastrophic situations and hazard mitigation requires preparatory measures at all levels. Structural assessment is the diagnosis of the seismic health of buildings. Assessment is the prelude to decisions about rehabilitation or even demolition. The scale of the problem in dense urban settings brings about a need for macro seismic appraisal procedures because large numbers of existing buildings do not conform to the increased requirements of new earthquake codes and specifications or have other deficiencies. It is the vulnerable buildings - liable to cause damage and loss of life - that need immediate attention and urgent appraisal in order to decide if structural rehabilitation and upgrading are feasible. Current economic, efficient and occupant-friendly rehabilitation techniques vary widely and include the application either of precast concrete panels or layers, strips and patches of fiber reinforced polymers (FRP) in strategic locations. The papers in this book, many by renowned authorities in earthquake engineering, chart new and vital directions of research and application in the assessment and rehabilitation of buildings in seismic regions. While several papers discuss the probabilistic prediction and quantification of structural damage, others present approaches related with the in-situ and occupant friendly upgrading of buildings and propose both economical and practical techniques to address the problem.