Cal Poly's Symposium on Urban Disaster Risk Reduction and Regeneration Planning: An Overview

Abstract

Batteate presents an overview of these three intense days when more than thirty leading professionals from the US and abroad presented their work and their views, and participants were able to engage in important discussions. FOCUS has also published a special issue with the complete proceedings of the symposium. 1 Statistics show that disasters are on the rise in frequency and severity. The year 2005 brought disasters to the front stage with the category five Hurricane Katrina and the 7.6 magnitude Pakistani earthquake. The estimated 9.0 magnitude Indian Ocean Earthquake of 2004 created a tsunami that leveled coastlines in multiple countries and claimed the lives of over 283,000 people. A growing world population and its contribution to environmental degradation, climate change and rapid urbanization further add to the already rising disaster potential. In lieu of this imminent disaster threat, Cal Poly State University San Luis Obispo held the International Symposium on Urban Disaster Risk Reduction and Regeneration Planning: Integrating Practice, Policy and Theory from November 3-5, 2005 and invited prominent professionals and academics specialized in the field, from six different countries, to participate and help answer the question: "How do we build more disaster resistant communities that provide safer places for people and their individual and collective property?" The main goal of the symposium was to contribute to the creation of an international foundation of knowledge furthering effective actions enhancing sustainability through mitigation of disaster risks and facilitation of recovery. The symposium´s objectives were: • Expand the international knowledge among academics and practitioners in community development and disaster management. • Create university level education plans for integrating and strengthening undergraduate and graduate curriculae for the design and implementation of disaster resistant communities. 1 The CD-ROM with the complete proceedings of the International Symposium on Urban Disaster Risk Reduction and Regeneration Planning: Integrating Practice, Policy and Theory can be obtained by request from Cal Poly´s City and Regional Planning Department. • Prepare faculty, students, and professionals to provide technical assistance to disaster-stricken regions, such as Southeast Asia, Pakistan, and the Gulf Coast. The symposium was organized around five sets of themes explored through presenters, panel discussions and audience input: a) Threats and Vulnerabilities, b) Location and Design Issues, c) Economic and Social Issues, d) Educational and Institutional Issues, and e) Technical Assistance. What follows is a summary of the main discussions and conclusions related to each theme. Threats and Vulnerabilities: What is at Risk? At the highest risk to disasters is human life, followed by property or assets, and finally environment or source of livelihood. Assessing highly vulnerable areas is a multi-phase process. At what point a region picks up in this process depends largely upon their level of development. Technological advances in geology and meteorology aid us in creating GIS (Geographic Information Systems) maps that catalog elements such as severity of disasters and frequency of disasters. SDI (Spatial Data Infrastructures), explained by Mark Sorenson (University of Redlands), help identify the fragility of the population, reaction capacity, and ability to recover, in what he calls "lifecycle disaster management". Stanley Goosby (Pacific Disaster Center) and Feng-Tyan Lin (Taiwan) are spearheading the creation of these GIS composite maps. Once complete, these technical and comprehensive maps provide design professionals with clear guidance. The built environment is most often the culprit in claiming lives when disaster strikes. Be it shantytowns of squatters or metropolises with poor architectural configurations, these forms pose a substantial challenge to reducing disaster-risk. The lack of resources and trained professionals in developing countries too often result in a recipe for catastrophe. As Marjorie Greene (Earthquake Engineering Research Institute)