Making Cities Resilient Report 2012

CHAPTER 4 | What are local governments doing to build resilience
Early warning and risk communication
Several cities have worked on introducing or upgrading early warning networks, including Cairns; San
Francisco, Cebu; North Vancouver; Chacao; Ancona; and Pune, to allow organisations and households
sufficient time to get to a place of safety. An integrated early warning system in Chacao uses a wireless
system to connect civil protection and environmental institutions to cameras that are monitoring four river
channels crossing the city (55).
Some cities undertake pre-emptive evacuations of high-risk areas to ensure the population is not exposed
to an imminent hazard – an approach that has contributed to a zero-casualty rate in Albay Province over
the past 16 years (excluding 2006). Albay Province’s local government uses a decision-tree model to decide
on the appropriate moment to take this costly yet life-saving response.
The clarity and speed of risk communication information among scientists that monitor hazard data,
government actors responsible for making decisions based on this information, and the public, is critical
to the effectiveness of emergency response. Johannesburg identified a lack of closeness among these
groups as a barrier to effective emergency response.
Some cities use online resources to communicate hazard warnings. In Chacao, real-time hazard information
is available online so people can keep abreast of changes when disasters occur (55). Other cities use
mobile phones to help disseminate hazard warnings quickly. In Albay Province, an organisation called
Infoboard distributed SIM cards to village officials (45). In Cairns, citizens receive emergency alerts through
the National Emergency Warning System via landline and mobile phones. But in advance of receiving
these warnings, individuals must have a clear idea of how to respond. To this end, Cairns has produced
evacuation guides that are available online and Saijo City has produced a map showing the areas that are
projected to become submerged, with escape routes and the location and capacities of evacuation sites.
Risk communication is more challenging in contexts with limited resources and telecommunications
infrastructure, such as Kampala, where there is currently no communication plan. In Moshi, if a disaster is
imminent, the Council sends cars around the city to disseminate warnings via loud speakers and broadcasts
warnings on local radio stations. Because there is no official hazard notification process in Pakistan, the
mass media plays a critical role in disseminating risk warnings (62).
10. Recovery and Rebuilding
Communities
Essential 10: After any disaster, ensure that the needs of the affected population are placed at the centre
of reconstruction, with support for them and their community organisations to design and help implement
responses, including rebuilding homes and livelihoods.
Work structured around this Essential and accumulated over the last 30 years has shown how important
recovery and rebuilding activities are – both in terms of helping affected individuals and communities to
take action and in terms of producing solutions that meet their needs.
Good recovery practices also have a direct link to reconstruction activities that have risk reduction and
larger development objectives. Disaster response becomes an opportunity to improve previous conditions.
One way that cities are doing this is to link recovery plans and policies with larger city development
planning. During reconstruction following the earthquake, Santa Tecla developed a long-term plan for
future development, through a series of public debates, which included the concept of disaster risk
reduction 15 . In Chincha, Pisco, Canete and Ica, Peru, following the 2007 earthquake, local governments
worked to integrate recovery into overall development and risk reduction. This entailed work on a range
of issues, including updating and redesigning the municipalities’ development plans to make them more
Making Cities Resilient Report 2012 | 63