Keywords:

design management, tropical cyclones, floods, risk management, urban area

Organizers:

  • Jorge Lopez Ortiz, Ph.D. Candidate, Urbanism Doctoral Program, Universidad Nacional Autonoma de México UNAM, Mexico
  • Tomonori Sato, Associate Professor, Faculty of Environmental Earth Science, Hokkaido University, Japan

Session description:

Increasing natural hazards in urban areas associated with severe hydrometeorological phenomena is part of a global trend. Tropical cyclones affect the urban life of the coastal residents and infrastructure. Risk management, from a viewpoint of disaster prevention, requires integrated strategies to mitigate the impact of hydrometeorological phenomena on urban communities considering the complexity and capacity of the natural environment. Because of this, more investments have focused on emergency resolution and recovery, and less have been for disaster prevention. To achieve the necessary preparedness and response capacity, identification of vulnerable groups is required, and it is essential to establish differentiated prevention strategies. This will improve decision making in the different stages of a disaster, offer more prevention strategies, and require less investment to face emergencies. With a decision model, the risk could be managed with prevention strategies using newly available technologies, such as land classification, tropical cyclone and flooding prediction, identification of vulnerable communities, to develop differential strategies based on the actors involved. For coastal cities, the design of decision models, integrating risk prevention to confront the impacts of flooding, will generate mitigation strategies by developing an urban environment with increased habitability and provide decision-making tools to vulnerable communities. This session’s objective is to approach, from the disaster prevention perspective, the risk assessment and management of floods and other natural hazards related with hydrometeorological events in the urbanized area.