International perspectives on urban resilience

International perspectives on urban resilienc

Decision–Support System Portal as a tool for mainstreaming DRR into urban decision making

Recent disasters such as Super Storm Sandy, the Haitian Earthquake and extensive floods across the United Kingdom have highlighted the fragility of cities to a range of hazards and threats thus emphasizing the increasing importance of resilience and disaster risk reduction (DRR) and the influences of such concepts upon the management of the built environment. While this makes the role of planning, design and construction stakeholders crucial in implementing the principles of DRR, tensions exist regarding the extent to which DRR measures should be implemented during planning, design and construction process; in particular who should be responsible for the implementation of such measures. This paper presents a web-based Decision-Support System Portal (DSSP) developed during a four-year European Union-funded project which is examining the design and planning of safer urban spaces. Central to the project is an integrated security and resilience (ISR) design framework that engages local stakeholders for identifying vulnerabilities and improving urban spaces with respect to ‘security threats’. The DSSP helps end-users better understand the vulnerabilities and design possibilities of the proposed site by allowing users to pursue decision-support scenarios of secure urban design and planning

Resilient design for community safety and terror-resistant cities

Resilience against an array of traditional and unconventional terrorist threats is increasingly important to the way towns and\ cities are designed and managed and how built environment professionals attempt to enhance levels of community safety. This is particularly the case with regard to crowded public places and transport systems such as light rail or trams, which are seen as particularly vulnerable to terrorist attack. This paper argues that contemporary terrorist threats and tactics mean that counter-terrorism in urban areas should increasingly seek to hybridise hard and soft engineering solutions in order to design and manage the built environment in ways that can reduce the occurrence or impact of a terrorist attack. In particular, it is argued that for counter-terrorism to be successful, inter-professional solutions are required for a wide range of public, private and community stakeholders that are (or should be) involved with the planning, design, construction, operation and management of public places