Urban Preparedness and Response? How Built Environment Professionals Can Help the Humanitarian Sector?

How can urban communities and governments be prepared and plan for natural and man- made disasters? More crucially how should we rebuild post disaster? How do we adapt to rapid changes and implement the New Urban Agenda at Habitat III and the Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction, adopted by UN Member states in March 2015. Built environment professionals have a critical role to play in supporting the humanitarian sector, governments and agencies to respond to and mitigate both natural and man-made humanitarian crises. But more crucially we can help communities to plan, adapt to, reduce risks and rebuild. This panel discussion will demonstrate what humanitarian agencies need and how town planners, architects, engineers and surveyors can help urban societies and governments to prepare for and rebuild post disaster. This includes preparing for climate change impacts, building back better, adhering to standards and ethics and dealing with land ownership issues. These issues cut across spatial development; and urban economy, housing and basic services. The New Urban Agenda seeks this and professionals in the built environment must utilise their skills and practice in adaptation, preparedness and rebuilding efforts. Urban issues have also been recognised in the launch of the Global Alliance for Urban Crises at the World Humanitarian Summit in Istanbul, May 2016. Increasing urbanisation means pressures on essential services and natural resources are intensifying. It is therefore, crucially important that urban societies are resilient and can adapt to rapid change. This includes how emergency responses can be better adapted to the nature, scale and complexity of villages, towns and cities. The training, experience and expertise of urban planners, architects, engineers and surveyors makes them perfectly placed to advise and support such initiatives and this session will explore that and explore from Ecuador, Sri Lanka, India, Malaysia, Zimbabwe and Scotland.