Building Urban Resilience for Disaster Risk Management and Disaster Risk Reduction

Disaster Risk Management (DRM) and Disaster Risk Reduction (DRR) emerged as systematic approaches to reduce the impact of climate change on the built environment. However, post 2015 United Nations (UN) disaster management and emergency policies failed to capture the dynamics of hazards, exposure and vulnerability essential for building urban resilience. As part of an ongoing PhD study, this paper aims to identify common principles for DRM and DRR in the context of urban resilience, towards building coherence between the 2015-2030 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) for the built environment and the Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction (SFDRR). The paper adopts a constructivist position to investigate the historical emergence of DRM and DRR in pre-and-post the year 2015. Learning lessons, identifying gaps and future challenges, a correlational study of the three-stage disaster preparedness process of recovery, rehabilitation and reconstruction in DRR and DRM is conducted, against the indicators of Target D for the SFDRR, and Goal 11 for the SDGs three main constructs: disaster damage, critical infrastructure and disruption of basic services. The outcomes of this study show the absence of indicators to monitor progress on evolving disasters and underlying risk drivers. A Preparedness Framework is developed in this paper with recommendations to integrate the UN Habitat Urban System Model Approach for urban resilience, and develop risk-resilient DRM and DRR frameworks for sustainable built environments.