Florian Roth

Disaster, Resilience and Security in Global Cities

Today the majority of the globe’s inhabitants live in urban areas, and according to all prognoses, cities will continue to grow in the coming decades. Global cities are also becoming increasingly connected as a result of economic, political, cultural and demographic globalization. In the context of urban security management, the growing complexity these connections bring may present a doubleedged sword: global cities can be both the most secure and the most dangerous places to be when disaster strikes. Developing appropriate mechanisms to prepare for and cope with complex crises in cities will, in the future, be a key aspect of security policy-making. In this article we explore current trends in research and practice concerning the management of disasters in eight global cities, particularly focusing on aspects of preparedness, response, urban resilience and cooperation. The results of the study indicate that cities must improve the capacity to predict new or unforeseen risk by diversifying capabilities for risk assessment and improving inter-agency collaborations. In addition, cities must adopt new approaches to disaster management that are sufficiently flexible to adapt to a changing risk environment and to safeguard urban security. This article is available in Journal of Strategic Security: http://scholarcommons.usf.edu/jss/vol6/iss2/5

Transformations in European Natural Hazard Management: There and Back Again

Today, technical natural hazard management represents the central mode of governance for coping with natural and man-made hazards in many parts of the world. In most European states, it is primarily organized through specialized agencies at the national or sub-national level, which analyse and assess risks to society, organize preventive and responsive measures and inform the public. In recent years, however, this mode of security governance has been increasingly challenged by new approaches to handling hazards that emphasize decentralized, self-organizing structures for flexible responses to challenges posed by complexity and unpredictability (see also Hollis in this volume). Resilience is an oft-used concept (and sometimes buzzword) arguably lying at the centre of this transformation in civil security that seems to cherry-pick elements of natural hazard management’s long and varied history. This transformation has been triggered by several obvious failures and shortcomings of technical natural hazard management, in particular to effectively prevent or mitigate major large-scale, cascading disasters such as the 2004 Indian Ocean Tsunami, Hurricane Katrina in 2005 and the Great Eastern Japan Earthquake and Tsunami in 2011 (which resulted in the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power plant meltdown).

Preventing and Managing Large-Scale Disasters in Swiss Cities

While risk managers at the city level have generally been found to favor a stronger involvement by, and engagement with, the federal government in the predisaster phase, the clash of ‘cultures’ between the operationally-oriented city risk managers and the more strategically-oriented federal agencies needs to be acknowledged and addressed. The federal concepts are “...useful, but very general. [...] What we needed is a much more operational basis for planning, much more focused on the ground. [...] It is important that the Table 2: Stated events and processes influencing city-level risk analysis. Preventing and Managing Large-Scale Disasters in Swiss Cities 10 Confederation understands this...”12 A possible reason for this clash, mentioned by the interviewees, is that cities are only rarely actively involved in the risk identification and analysis process of higher political levels. Following the interviewees’ perspective, by developing concepts and scenarios for risks that are directly relevant in the specific city context, the federal government could make sure that the most important, and newly emerging risks, are acknowledged by all lower political levels and risk managers. Another (or rather a complementary) channel that we found to be used to introduce topics discussed at higher political levels into city risk managers’ agendas is through common exercises. Preparedness for power blackouts and pandemics have been tested in major, nationwide exercises, which (further) sensitized city risk managers to the challenges associated with managing these hazards. The security network exercise conducted in 2014 (SVU 14) was referred to as a positive example13. Training opportunities offered by the federal administration to people responsible for local disaster management is another tool through which knowledge and a common understanding of hazards is distributed and shared in Switzerland’s federalist civil protection system. 4.2 The risk landscape What are the hazards and risks Swiss cities focus on in their current practices? What do city risk managers regard as the most concerning scenarios? According to the respondents, daily business is mostly preoccupied dealing with regular events on small-to-medium scales. They include seasonal floods, fires, and regular crime. The challenge of risk managers at the city level is that they need to be familiar with, and cover the whole range of hazards, i.e. from minor to major events. Some respondents saw a trend in risk analysis leading away from risks that are primarily dealt with by the police or fire service to “...everything that moves people and scares them...”