Abstract
Most of the present cities are characterized by low-density urban sprawl, fragile infrastructure, low resilience, and people’s poor coping capability to disasters. Further with the increasing unplanned rapid urbanization, the disasters (in terms of frequency and numbers) and their impacts are increasing, which is primarily associated with badly planned and managed urban development, degraded ecosystems, and poverty. According to a study by the United Nations, almost 890 million people (60 %) across the globe live in cities that are at risk from at least one major natural disaster, including floods, droughts, cyclones, or earthquakes. Disasters eventually wipe off years of development and cause death, injury, economic losses, and environmental and urban systems’ degradation. Since a city is an integration of complicated urban systems like transportation, water supply, sanitation, housing, and other urban infrastructure and services, strengthening these systems will increase the resilience and help in disaster management in urban areas. On the other hand, smart cities use information and communications technology (ICT) to involve people, improve city services, and enhance urban systems which in turn will improve disaster resilience. To make cities disaster resilient right at the inception stage, the efficiency in urban planning can have a major impact on communities’ preparedness and capacities to recover. Smart growth strategies like creating flexible land-use policies, targeting public investment, and engaging the entire community in making decisions can help communities recover from a disaster, rebuild according to a shared community vision, and be better prepared for a disaster. This paper tries to explore through various examples those aspects of smart cities which build and assist in disaster resilience of cities. The study clearly indicates that the relation between smart development and disaster resilience is strong, where the smart growth, smart urbanization (smart grids, eco-cities, compact development), and low-carbon footprint strategies have been used and are some of the most needed consideration to deal with the present scale of disasters in urban areas.
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Notes
- 1.
EPA- and FEMA-collaborated projects under the MoU in 2010 using smart growth as a tool for urban resilience (http://www2.epa.gov/smartgrowth/smart-growth-strategies-disaster-resilience-and-recovery)
- 2.
National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) founded in 1901, and now part of the US Department of Commerce, is one of the nation’s oldest physical science laboratories (http://www.nist.gov/disaster-resilience/).
- 3.
Smart Growth America is the American National organization dedicated to researching, advocating for, and leading coalitions to bring smart growth practices to more communities nationwide. It advocates for people who want to live and work in great neighborhoods (http://www.smartgrowthamerica.org/issues/transportation/).
- 4.
Emergency Transportation Operations (ETO)—a collective effort among Federal Highway Administration (FHWA), National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA), and Federal Transit Administration (FTA) that was launched in 2004, the US Department of Transportation across many cities in the USA
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Fujitsu Asia Conference—held on November 11, 2014, in Jakarta, Indonesia, aimed at a future vision for Asia using ICT to overcome social challenges in Asian disaster management (http://journal.jp.fujitsu.com/en/2014/11/18/02/)
- 6.
IBM Intelligent Operations Center synchronizes and analyzes information gathered from diverse data-collection systems. It primarily takes initiatives toward Smart Planet initiatives focus on smart innovative solutions (http://www.ibm.com/smarterplanet/us/en/public_safety/nextsteps/solution/M573313P64918R78.html).
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- 9.
Operation Fresh Start is a project of the National Center for Appropriate Technology (NCAT). It began in 1997 with support from the Department of Energy’s Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy (EERE) in response to the 1997 flooding in Red River, North Dakota (http://www.freshstart.ncat.org/articles/enrgsyst.htm).
- 10.
Solar Outreach Partnership (SolarOPs) is a designed solar energy adoption on the local level by providing timely and actionable information to local governments. Funded by the US Department of Energy (DOE) SunShot Initiative, SolarOPs achieves its goals through a mix of educational workshops, peer-to-peer sharing opportunities, research-based reports, and online resources (http://solaroutreach.org/resource/resilienceresourcehub/#.VgOo3N-qqko).
- 11.
The Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITS): ITS is the product from the Joint Program Office (JPO), Research and Innovative Technology Administration (RITA), and the US Department of Transportation (USDOT), by Noblis, Inc., with cooperation from the USDOT’s John A. Volpe National Transportation Systems Center (http://www.its.dot.gov/standards_strategic_plan/).
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Bansal, N., Mukherjee, M., Gairola, A. (2017). Smart Cities and Disaster Resilience. In: Seta, F., Sen, J., Biswas, A., Khare, A. (eds) From Poverty, Inequality to Smart City. Springer Transactions in Civil and Environmental Engineering. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-10-2141-1_8
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