Urban Disaster and Recovery

A special issue of Urban Science (ISSN 2413-8851).

Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (1 June 2018) | Viewed by 18592

Special Issue Editors


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Guest Editor
School of Geographical Sciences and Urban Planning, Arizona State University, Tempe, AZ 85281, USA
Interests: sustainable planning and design; socio-economic assessments; disaster management and recovery planning; perception and behavior studies; institutional design

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Guest Editor
School of Public Affairs, University of South Florida, 4202 E Fowler Ave SOC 107, Tampa, FL 33620, USA
Interests: community resiliency; socio-ecological urban impacts; waterfront development; urban economic and real estate development; planned community

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

As the world rapidly urbanizes, and as extreme disasters become the norm rather than the exception, urban areas will experience significant adverse impacts to current and future development, infrastructure, and social systems. While urban environments may feel the greatest impacts from high levels of uncertainty, they also have the potential to be the working and living laboratories that will create the greatest ideas that can mitigate these disasters as well as building resilient and adaptive systems to lessen the severity of current and future consequences.

This Special Edition of the journal Urban Science asks urban planners, social scientists, engineers, and urban policy analysts to explore ways to make our cities more resilient to natural disasters. In this Special Issue, we will not make any claims or debate climate change, nor do we attempt to discuss how we got to this point. Rather, we are concerned with how urban environments are dealing with reducing the impacts of disasters and improving the processes for recovery and reconstruction in a resilient manner from a planning and policy perspective. Both theoretical and case study perspectives are welcome.

Possible topics include:

  • How to reduce impacts and threats
  • How to adapt and mitigate future shocks to the urban system
  • Social dimensions and issues of equity in recovery
  • Cascading effects of disasters
  • How to improve response, recovery, and reconstruction
  • Resilient urban systems and reducing vulnerability
  • Case studies that show not only success but failures
  • The role of institutional capacity

Abstract deadline: 15 February 2018
Fully paper deadline: 1 June 2018

Prof. Dr. David Pijawka
Dr. Stephen Buckman
Guest Editors

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Keywords

  • resiliency
  • adaptive capacity
  • socio-ecosystem
  • vulnerability
  • mitigation
  • hazard assessment
  • social equity

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Published Papers (3 papers)

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13 pages, 573 KiB  
Article
Coping with Floods in Pikine, Senegal: An Exploration of Household Impacts and Prevention Efforts
by Hilary Hungerford, Sarah L. Smiley, Taylor Blair, Samantha Beutler, Noel Bowers and Eddy Cadet
Urban Sci. 2019, 3(2), 54; https://doi.org/10.3390/urbansci3020054 - 18 May 2019
Cited by 8 | Viewed by 4702
Abstract
African cities are at increasing risk for disasters, including floods. Pikine, Senegal—located on the outskirts of the Dakar metropolitan region—has experienced regular floods since 2005 due to a rising water table, dense settlement, and inadequate drainage. The goal of this research was to [...] Read more.
African cities are at increasing risk for disasters, including floods. Pikine, Senegal—located on the outskirts of the Dakar metropolitan region—has experienced regular floods since 2005 due to a rising water table, dense settlement, and inadequate drainage. The goal of this research was to assess household experiences of floods through in-depth qualitative interviews in one area of Pikine. A total of 44 households were interviewed on the economic and health impacts of flooding and their perceptions of flood mitigation strategies. Our research confirmed that floods create substantial economic and health burdens for families and that infrastructure projects have helped, but not solved, the flooding issues. Our research also had some unexpected findings, particularly relating to concerns over drinking water, land tenure and housing prices, and perception of government intervention. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Urban Disaster and Recovery)
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24 pages, 10518 KiB  
Article
How Do Cities Flow in an Emergency? Tracing Human Mobility Patterns during a Natural Disaster with Big Data and Geospatial Data Science
by Su Yeon Han, Ming-Hsiang Tsou, Elijah Knaap, Sergio Rey and Guofeng Cao
Urban Sci. 2019, 3(2), 51; https://doi.org/10.3390/urbansci3020051 - 6 May 2019
Cited by 42 | Viewed by 7931
Abstract
Understanding human movements in the face of natural disasters is critical for disaster evacuation planning, management, and relief. Despite the clear need for such work, these studies are rare in the literature due to the lack of available data measuring spatiotemporal mobility patterns [...] Read more.
Understanding human movements in the face of natural disasters is critical for disaster evacuation planning, management, and relief. Despite the clear need for such work, these studies are rare in the literature due to the lack of available data measuring spatiotemporal mobility patterns during actual disasters. This study explores the spatiotemporal patterns of evacuation travels by leveraging users’ location information from millions of tweets posted in the hours prior and concurrent to Hurricane Matthew. Our analysis yields several practical insights, including the following: (1) We identified trajectories of Twitter users moving out of evacuation zones once the evacuation was ordered and then returning home after the hurricane passed. (2) Evacuation zone residents produced an unusually large number of tweets outside evacuation zones during the evacuation order period. (3) It took several days for the evacuees in both South Carolina and Georgia to leave their residential areas after the mandatory evacuation was ordered, but Georgia residents typically took more time to return home. (4) Evacuees are more likely to choose larger cities farther away as their destinations for safety instead of nearby small cities. (5) Human movements during the evacuation follow a log-normal distribution. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Urban Disaster and Recovery)
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15 pages, 1919 KiB  
Concept Paper
Integrating a City’s Existing Infrastructure Vulnerabilities and Carbon Footprint for Achieving City-Wide Sustainability and Resilience Goals
by Mark Reiner, Rylie Pelton and Andrew Fang
Urban Sci. 2018, 2(3), 53; https://doi.org/10.3390/urbansci2030053 - 25 Jun 2018
Viewed by 5235
Abstract
Cities are setting both sustainability and resilience goals that recognize the significant pressures that cities will face over the coming decades due to increasing global populations, aging infrastructure, and hazards posed by climate change. To further help cities reach and meet this broad [...] Read more.
Cities are setting both sustainability and resilience goals that recognize the significant pressures that cities will face over the coming decades due to increasing global populations, aging infrastructure, and hazards posed by climate change. To further help cities reach and meet this broad range of goals, the World Bank recently released the Urban Sustainability Framework in early 2018 as a framework for achieving an intelligent growth scenario, with a key recommendation of calls for the more efficient use of existing infrastructure. Albeit a prudent course, the first step in adding more stress to existing infrastructure requires a baseline cross-sector examination as to the existing daily reliability, age of assets, and other vulnerabilities regarding climate change. This examination of the inherent reliability of a city’s infrastructure systems then becomes the foundation for prioritizing projects in the capital investment planning process. However, to better integrate cross-silo priorities, new key performance indicators are required to better connect existing infrastructure vulnerabilities to a city’s carbon footprint and move towards synchronizing climate action and capital investment planning priorities to better represent intelligent growth and resource use. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Urban Disaster and Recovery)
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