Analysis of National and Subnational Disaster Loss and Damage Databases – Establishing a Linkage to Climate Change Impacts to Strengthen Local Urban Resilience Plans

UNDP, through varying levels of support, is instrumental in the development of disaster loss and damage databases and associated institutionalisation at the national and subnational levels in over 25 locations. Online disaster loss and damage databases are available for several countries in the South and Southeast Asian region. It is of critical value to these countries to assess and analyse information in these databases within the context of local climate change trends and impacts to explore inherent linkages between climate change and disaster losses.

Through the project, ICLEI South Asia is analysing the disaster loss and damage data for three country databases (Indonesia, Cambodia and Sri Lanka), with an aim to correlate trends in loss and damage from disasters reported at the national and subnational levels (in the database), with disasters and damage recorded at the city level. These events and consequent damage have been analysed in the context of observed climate impacts in this region. Province prioritization based on the impacts of disaster was carried out and top two provinces were thus selected. In order to carry out city selection, the capital or a prominent city of each province was identified for further analysis, as the online databases do not have disaggregated city level information. The capital or prominent cities are the cities with the highest population density and infrastructure investments, thus making them the most significant city in the province. In addition, interventions on disaster risk reduction (DRR) and resilience building in these capital cities can be expected to have wider influence on the other cities and towns in these provinces.

City level data collection on the climate change and disaster patterns, along with disaster preparedness, has been carried out through secondary data collection in Sri Lanka and Indonesia. Field visits for the same have been carried out in both the cities in Cambodia and DRR storylines have been prepared for six cities.

In addition a methodology for developing the “DRR-Climate Change” linkage and identifying potential interventions to reduce urban vulnerability will also be developed.

Activities

29.09.2015
Strengthening Local Urban Resilience Plans in Southeast Asia