Innovations in
Disaster
ManagementEXPERIENCES FROM THE AMERICAN RED CROSS COASTAL CITIES PROJECT
Urbanization and Disaster Risk
Today, 55% of the world’s population lives in urban areas, a proportion that is expected to
increase to 68% by 2050.
Projections show that urbanization, the gradual shift in residence of the human population
from rural to urban areas, combined with the overall growth of the world’s population
could add another 2.5 billion people to urban areas by 2050, with close to 90% of this
increase taking place in Asia and Africa
Together, just three countries will account for 35% of the projected growth of the world’s
urban population between 2018 and 2050.
The urban population of the world has grown rapidly from 751 million in 1950 to 4.2 billion
in 2018. Asia, despite its relatively lower level of urbanization, is home to 54% of the
world’s urban population
Urban Disasters are different
Higher population (currently 55% of the world’s population)
Governance institutions and political importance (lead role in emergencies response or
policy formulation)
physical density of cities – infrastructure
Complex and interdependency of urban systems – domino effect
Diversity of skills and resources of the urban population
Diverse economic status
Transient Population
Interconnected – technology driving it
Can technology
increase disaster
preparedness of communities
A growing usage of social media platforms as a source of disaster information and alert.
Emergency alerts and related DRR information can help users take effective preventive actions.
These alerts can reduce property damage caused by floods and other disasters by $324 per household per year
It also reduce morbidity and mortality caused by floods and other disasters by 643 years of healthy life lost per 100,000 population.
Contributes to the improvement of social cohesion, which has been linked to an improved community response to disasters.
Other mobile apps
The American Red Cross offers a suite of apps for emergencies, hurricanes, tornadoes,
and earthquakes, providing location-specific information, alerts and support during
disasters (hazard app)
Peta Bencana (Indonesia) harnesses the power of social media to gather, sort, and
display information about flooding in real time
Coastal Cities project
A multi-country project covering 5 coastal cities – Indonesia (2), Vanuatu
(1) and Myanmar (1)
The goal of the project is to enhance local collaboration and problem
solving to support effective climate change adaptation.
The Nature Conservancy (TNC) has joined efforts with GDPC in the
project to help identify ways that nature can be a part of building social-
ecological community resilience before, during, and after natural
disasters.
Semarang City, Central Java
Ternate
City;North
Maluku
Province
OUR WORK IN INDONESIA
Resilient Coastal Cities Explorer
The Resilient Coastal Cities Explorer is an online mapping decision support tool, or web-responsive mobile app, that demonstrates the critical role mangroves play in reducing social and economic vulnerability to flooding in Semarang, Indonesia. The app helps city planners and disaster managers better understand how nature-based adaptation solutions can reduce the risk of flooding in the city.
Who developed it?
TNC developed the spatial analysis
and web app in collaboration with
FloodTags, Wetlands International
and Esri for Pelang Merah Indonesia
(Red Cross Indonesia) and the
Global Disaster Preparedness Center
of the American Red Cross
Who can use it
City planners,
disaster managers, and
decision makers
who need to assess real-time flood risk information alongside socio-
economic and ecological data to help identify viable adaptation
solutions that build resilience and reduce the risk of city flooding
and inundation.
How does it work?
Component 1: Real-time Flood Reports:
FloodTags developed software to analyze Twitter content to derive real-time information on potential flood events.
FloodTags worked with the TNC Indonesia team to train their algorithms to search tweets written in Bahasa for key words that help identify the location of flood events.
For each event, the most probable location, quantification of uncertainty, number of tweets per class, and frequently used keywords were summarized.
FloodTags filtered and validated each flood report
The final data product is distributed through the FloodTags dashboard which TNC accesses to map flood-prone areas and summarize impacts to people and property.
Component 2: Administrative summaries
Flood Risk: helps identify where people, places, and livelihoods are at risk from flooding within an administrative unit.
The interactive map shows summary statistics of people and assets potentially impacted within the administrative unit. The user can view either a single flood event or select a date range to view cumulative flood tweets to highlight the most vulnerable areas.
Adaptation Solutions:
helps planners and land managers visualize opportunities for nature-based adaptationsolutions that can help reduce flood risk. Adaptation solutions were selected based onactions that are feasible in the region, namely mangrove restoration and open spacereclamation/preservation.
Component 3: Mangrove Restoration Simulations
The app enables stakeholders to visualize the simulated benefits of alandscape-scale mangrove restoration scenarios in 3-dimensionalspace.
The objective is to influence city land use planners, disastermanagers, and other decision makers to consider nature-basedadaptation solutions to flood risk by allowing them to virtually observethe benefits that mangrove ecosystems can provide to theircommunities, built infrastructure, and way of life.