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NaDiMa Dialogue #15 | Advancing Disaster Risk Management Through Urban Resilience Assessment | 25 & 27 November

Foto: Colourbox/Urheber: unbekannt
  • Agenda

    A series of prominent natural and technical hazards, as well as socio-economic and socio-political shocks, highlighted that our communities are not immune to the forces of sudden shocks or chronic stresses. Since cities are at the forefront of these challenges and their consequences, there is a greater need than ever before for building resilient cities to ensure that they are able to anticipate, absorb, recover, and learn quickly from unexpected changes. Resilience is all about dealing with change, adapting, and transforming in response to change, and has been at the core of scientific and political discourses on risk reduction and management over the past two decades. However, the growing interest in and need for resilience has not led to a shared understanding of how the concept is perceived, defined, and operationalized. This has called for further discussion and exchanged between relevant stakeholders (including academics, policymakers, practitioners, etc.) at the interface of science and policy. This is particularly important because while the translation of resilience as an abstract scientific concept into policy is increasingly in demand, it is at the same time quite challenging and requiring a highly contextualized perspective. Since resilience is a place-specific and multi-dimensional term, operationalizing the concept can predispose decision-makers, stakeholders, and urban planners to understand factors that contribute to resilience and interventions to build and enhance it.

    Therefore, this workshop aims at presenting concepts, indicators, and methodologies to operationalize urban resilience to acute shocks (case of Iran) or chronic stresses (case of Germany). Operationalizing resilience has often been performed through developing composite indicators. The procedures of composite indicators building will be based on the methodology outlined in Asadzadeh et al. (2017). This will enable participants to get familiar with existing theoretical frameworks that enable exploration, explanation, and evaluation of resilience to different disasters. In addition, the workshop will present the procedure for composite indicator building toward measuring resilience, including real applications in two different risk and hazard contexts from Germany (Asadzadeh et al., 2020) and Iran (Asadzadeh et al., 2015). Furthermore, the dominant challenges and opportunities for conceptualizing and operationalizing resilience will be discussed.
    References

    Day 1 (25th November)

    Introduction:

    -        Resilience as a de-facto concept to deal with natural disasters and their associated challenges

    -        Existing frameworks, tools, and concepts under the umbrella of measuring resilience

    -        Composite indicators as the breaking down approach to measure resilience

    Case study applications:

    -        Step-by-step guideline to develop composite indicators

    -        Real application in two different contexts from Germany and Iran

    -        Policy and practice recommendations for resilience enhancement

    Experiment practice:

    Target: Developing a measurement framework for assessing the resilience of urban systems (e.g. infrastructures, urban planning, etc.) to natural disasters

    Questions:

    -        Which characteristics and capacities are needed to frame and analyze urban resilience against natural disasters?

    -        What kind of individual indicators can be selected as proxies for resilience and transit from theory to practice?

    Day 2 (27th November)

    -        Q&A over Day 1 topics

    -        Group presentation by each group

    -        Discussions / Q/A

    -        Potential next work on resilience measurement

    -        Conclusion

  • Speakers

    Introduction:

    Prof. Dr. Mohammad Reza Farzanegan, Philipps-Universität Marburg, CNMS & FB02

    Prof. Dr. Mohammad Farzanegan is Professor of Economics of the Middle East at Center for Near and Middle Eastern Studies (CNMS) & School of Business and Economics at Philipps-Universität Marburg. He is project leader of NaDiMa.

    Workshop Instructor:

    Dr. Asad Asadzadeh, Research Associate at the Institute of Geodesy and Geoinformation (IGG), University of Bonn, Germany

    Dr. Asad Asadzadeh is a postdoctoral researcher, and lecturer at the Institute of Geodesy and Geoinformation (IGG), University of Bonn, Germany. He has a broad interest in understanding and identifying pathways toward more resilient communities. Much of his work focuses on framing and analyzing urban resilience to acute shocks or chronic stresses, including inclusive urban governance and planning approaches to driving a transition toward long-term resilience building.

    Dr. Asadzadeh's previous work includes coordinating a BMBF-funded project titled Basic Infrastructures and Services for Inclusive Community Resilience (INCOR) at the Institute of Rescue Engineering and Civil Protection at TH Köln – University of Applied Sciences. He is also active in fundraising activities for research projects and is currently coordinating another BMBF-funded project titled Inclusive and Integrated Multi-Hazard Risk Management and Engagement of Volunteers to Increase Societal Resilience in Times of Changing Climates (INCREASE) for the University of Bonn, along with supervising master theses.

  • Target Audience

    Master & PhD students from the fields of Engineering, Natural Science, Disaster Management, Urban Planning, Urban Management, Geography, and other relevant fields

  • Registration and Technical Requirements

    Time and Place: 25 November 2021, 11:00 am - 05:00 pm (CET), and 27 November 2021, 11:00 am - 05:00 pm (CET), Online via Adobe Connect

    How to join: Click here to register for the event.

    Please note: This is a 2-days event. Please only register if you aim to participate in both days.

    Platform: We use Adobe Connect for the NaDiMa Dialogue Series. It can be accessed via browser or desktop app. Meeting Applications for Adobe Connect can be downloaded here.

    Instructions and Technical Requirements for Participants: 

    Quick Start Guide for Participants
    How to be a Participant in Adobe Connect (YouTube)

  • Prerequisites

    Please read the following resources for operationalizing disaster resilience in order to attend the workshop:

    1. Asadzadeh, A., Kötter, T., Salehi, P., & Birkmann, J. (2017). Operationalizing a concept: The systematic review of composite indicator building for measuring community disaster resilience. International Journal of Disaster Risk Reduction, 25, 147–162. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijdrr.2017.09.015

    2. Cutter, S. L. (2016). The landscape of disaster resilience indicators in the USA. Natural Hazards, 80(2), 741–758. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11069-015-1993-2

    3. Sharifi, A. (2016). A critical review of selected tools for assessing community resilience. Ecological Indicators, 69, 629–647. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ecolind.2016.05.023

  • Poster

  • Workshop Materials

    Recording: Part 1 | Part 2