Climate Disaster Resilience: Focus on Coastal Urban Cities in Asia

Abstract

Recognizing the ever-increasing vulnerability of coastal urban cities in Asia due to climate change impacts and variability and also due to fast-growing urban development, this study focusing on climate disaster resilience is conducted in order to measure the existing level of climate disaster resilience of the targeted areas using a Climate Disaster Resilience Index. The index is developed based on five resilience-based dimensions: natural, physical, social, economic and institutional. The scope of this study is limited to climate-induced disasters, such as cyclone, flood, heat wave, drought and heavy rainfall induced landslide. For each individual city case, resilience information is presented as overall resilience, and separate physical, social, economic and institutional resilience. Higher values of resilience are equivalent to higher preparedness to cope with climate and disasters and inversely. Based on the results, policy points and recommendations are suggested by the authors and provide encouragement of city governments engagements in specific cist services, institution and capacity building. Not only are outputs from this study useful for city governments, but they also provide valuable knowledge and information to other local and national stakeholders having a similar target: the enhancement of community resilience.

Full text

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CLIMATE DISASTER RESILIENCE:
FOCUS ON COASTAL URBAN CITIES IN ASIA
RAJIB SHAW and IEDM Team*
International Environment and Disaster Management (IEDM) Laboratory,
Graduate School of Global Environmental Studies, Kyoto University,
Yoshida Honmachi, Sakyo-Ku, Kyoto 606-8501, Japan
shaw@global.mbox.media.kyoto-u.ac.jp
* This study is part of the GCOE (Global Center of Excellency) Program “Human Security Engineering for Asian
Megacity” of Kyoto University. Project members include Rajib Shaw, Bam Razafindrabe, Parvin Gulshan and
Yukiko Takeuchi (all from IEDM) and Akhilesh Surjan (from UNU). An earlier version of the paper was published
in the Asian Journal of Environment and Disaster Management, Volume 1, June 2009.

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CLIMATE DISASTER RESILIENCE:
FOCUS ON COASTAL URBAN CITIES IN ASIA
Abstract
Recognizing the ever-increasing vulnerability of coastal urban cities in Asia due
to climate change impacts and variability and also due to fast-growing urban
development, this study focusing on climate disaster resilience is conducted in
order to measure the existing level of climate disaster resilience of the targeted
areas using a Climate Disaster Resilience Index. The index is developed based
on five resilience-based dimensions: natural, physical, social, economic and
institutional. The scope of this study is limited to climate-induced disasters, such
as cyclone, flood, heat wave, drought and heavy rainfall induced landslide. For
each individual city case, resilience information is presented as overall resilience,
and separate physical, social, economic and institutional resilience. Higher
values of resilience are equivalent to higher preparedness to cope with climate
and disasters and inversely. Based on the results, policy points and
recommendations are suggested by the authors and provide encouragement of
city governments’ engagements in specific cist services, institution and capacity
building. Not only are outputs from this study useful for city governments, but
they also provide valuable knowledge and information to other local and
national stakeholders having a similar target: the enhancement of community
resilience.
Keywords: Resilience; Urban; Disaster; Climate change, Coastal cities
1. Introduction
Asia is the epicenter of the current urbanization surge where some 1.1 billion people
will move to cities in the next 20 years.1,2 Its urban areas are experiencing ever
increasing risk due to changing climate.3 According to the United Nations Human
Settlements Programme 2007, ‘there is a constant pressure to keep pace with, if not
lead, change in regional and global economic development. This, in turn, can be a force
contributing to uncontrollable urban expansion and the generation of more vulnerability
to disasters’.4 Moreover, since Asia is the most disaster-prone region, the incidences of
climate-induced disasters are also high compared to other regions. Past disaster trends
suggests that high density population in Asian cities increases the mortality and the
number of affected people in a typical disaster event, which in turn also result in
increasing economic losses in the region. There is a serious concern that the targets of
Millennium Development Goals may not be effectively achieved if disaster risk
reduction is not prioritized in development planning in general and urban development
in particular.
Moreover, climate change is occurring, accompanied by significant changes in
precipitation, temperature, and changes in the frequency and intensity of some extreme
events. These changes will affect natural and human systems independently or in
combination with other determinants to alter the productivity, diversity and functions of
many ecosystems and livelihoods around the world. Yet these impacts will not be

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distributed or felt uniformly, as those ‘with the least resources have the least capacity to
adapt and are the most vulnerable’.5
Settlement on marginal or unstable land such as coastal areas, mountainous areas,
river basin and urban slums heightens their exposure to the impacts of climate hazards.
With limited capacities and resources at their disposal to respond to stresses such as
droughts, floods, typhoons and rainfall-induced landslides, their ability to meet basic
needs and improve their lives is constrained. Climate change impacts and variability,
therefore, threaten to exacerbate existing vulnerabilities and further entrench
development disparities.6 Thus, there is a need to build a resilient community that would
be efficiently capable to face climate change and associated disaster risk. For that, city
governments need to be aware of current and future potential risk and take more
initiative in order to enhance the resilience of the urban systems and communities.
Despite growing recognition of ‘building resilient communities and enhancing
adaptation to climate change’, Asian urban communities are not yet receiving adequate
attention. These climate change impacts will also affect their livelihoods, property,
environmental quality and future prosperity since climate change is expected to alter the
frequency, severity and complexity of climate-related hazards. Livelihood systems that
do not have built-in buffering mechanisms are especially vulnerable.7
In most cities in developing countries, the size and vulnerability of informal settlements
appear to greatly increase their susceptibility to risk. These are generally built in
unstable areas such as coastal zones, flood-prone planes and ravines, and geologically
unstable slopes.8
Many definitions of ‘resilience’ can be found in the literature. This study looks at
different dimensions of resilience from the lens of urban communities and is mainly
focused on three characteristics: (i) capacity to absorb stress or destructive forces
through resistance or adaptation; (ii) capacity to manage or maintain certain basic
functions and structures during disastrous events; and (iii) capacity to recover or
‘bounce back’ after an event.9 In the attempt of building a resilient community, key
questions that need to be answered are:
• How to enhance resilience of the community?
• What are the indicators that need to be addressed to be able to characterize and
measure Climate Disaster Resilience?
• How can we create an effective index to assess the level of climate disaster
resilience of a vulnerable urban community?
This study is an attempt to seek answers to these queries by focusing on coastal
Asian urban cities. Therefore, the objective of this study is to measure the existing level
of climate disaster resilience of the targeted areas using a Climate Disaster Resilience
Index (hereafter CDRI) which is developed considering five resilience-based
dimensions: natural, physical, social, economic and institutional. The whole process of
CDRI is to make city managers and practitioners aware of the existing and future city
risk for climate related disasters. The scope of this study is limited to climate-induced
disasters (hydro-meteorological disasters), such as cyclone, flood, heat wave, drought
and heavy rainfall induced landslide.

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2. Rationale of the study
2.1. Why Climate Disaster Resilience?
It is predicted that the severity and frequency of climate change induced disasters will
increase and those who have the least to cope with would be the most vulnerable. To
date, little consensus exist among the developed nations regarding the reduction of
greenhouse gases despite the ratification of Kyoto Protocol. Further, scientists also
estimated that even if emission of all greenhouse gases stopped today, some degree of
climate change would still occur and developing countries would have great
sufferings.10 Also it is said that mitigation is not cost-effective, especially for
developing countries.11 Therefore, developing countries have no alternative rather
putting emphasis to adaptation which is found to be closely associated to community’s
resilience.12
2.2. Why Coastal Urban Communities of Asia?
Seven out of ten nations having largest urban population in the Low Elevation Coastal
Zone (LECZ) are in Asia. Starting from largest these countries are China, India, Japan,
Indonesia, Bangladesh, Viet Nam, and Thailand.13 Among these seven countries except
Japan all are still in the group of developing nations. Most of the explosive growth is
occurring in developing countries of Asia where also about half of the urban population
lives in slum areas (informal settlements).3 These urban communities are more exposed
to crime, forced evictions and natural hazards than the rich. They are more vulnerable to
climate change and disasters because they often reside in sites prone to floods,
landslides and pollution. In addition to the above group, many of the urban communities
also have limited access to assets, thus limiting their ability to respond to hazards or to
manage risk.3 Therefore, focusing to these vulnerable urban communities and
developing their climate disaster resilience should be treated as an emergency need.
2.3. Why Hydro-metrological Disaster?
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change reported that the number of
hydro-meteorological disasters has doubled in last five years whereas, geological
hazards remain the same.14 According to a recent report of UN-Habitat, there has been a
50 percent rise in extreme weather events associated with climate change from the
1950s to 1990s.3 It is clear that since the majority of world’s population will be
residents of urban areas, these increased numbers of hydro-metrological disasters (such
as flood, drought, cyclone, heat-wave, rainfall-induced landslides, etc.) would be a great
threat to the lives and livelihood of a large population. In this context building resilience
of the urban communities to these disasters as well as climate change is a foremost
priority.
Clearly, valuable studies conducted to date have well described changing climatic
hazards and emphasized the need to intervene at city-level. Recognition of climate
change induced hydro-metrological disaster risk and exposure of Asian cities is of
particular relevance to this study and forms the basis for calibrating intense
city-community interventions aiming at reducing vulnerabilities and thus buttressing
resilience of urban communities to climate disaster risk.

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3. Methodology
In this Section, after a brief introduction of target cities, data collection as well as data
processing and analysis are presented.
3.1. Selection of target cities
Nine cities were selected from different countries of Asia. Selection was done in a way
to have representation of urban communities from large, medium and small cities. In
this study, large, medium and small cities are referred to those having a population of
less than one million, between one and five million and above 5 million inhabitants
respectively. Therefore, the following cities (Table 1) are considered for this study.
3.2. Data Collection
As shown in previous sections, the climate disaster resilience of urban communities
would be assessed from 5 different dimensions (natural, physical, social, economic,
institutional). Each of these dimensions consists of a number of parameter and each
parameter would have a number of complex variable and simple variables. These
variables are in fact the indicators to assess the climate disaster resilience of urban
community.
Ta
bl
e
1
.
S
e
l
ecte
d
c
i
t
i
es
i
n t
h
e stu
d
y
Name of the city Country PopulationaRelative size
of the city
1. Banda Aceh Indonesia 219,659 Small size
2. Bangkok Thailand 8,000,000bLarge size
3. Colombo Sri Lanka 647,100 Small size
4. Danang Vietnam 792,895 Small size
5. Hue Vietnam 330,836 Small size
6. Iloilo Philippines 403,196 Small size
7. Mumbai India 13,000,000 Large size
8. City of San Fernando, La
Union Philippines 114,813 Small size
9. Yokohama Japan 3,654,326 Medium size
aSource: questionnaire survey filled by city officials
bNight time population
Addressing all parameters and variables of the above dimensions, a data template
was designed for data collection from each urban community (in each city).
Questionnaire survey was the prime means of data collection. Secondary data was also
collected to supplement collected data. The list of these variables is presented in the
following section.

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3.3. Data Processing and Analysis
Data collected from questionnaire surveys were computed in excel. To better describe
Climate Disaster Resilience Index (CDRI), prime goal of this study, some weights were
assigned. Aggregate Weighted Mean Index or AWMI (for each dimension) was
calculated by using Weighted Mean Index (WMI) method. The calculated AWMI of
one dimension is the CDRI of that dimension.
Initially, rating scale has been constructed and weight has been assigned subjectively
based on how the city officials perceive the vulnerability of each variable by comparing
them one by one. Each dimension (natural, physical, social, economic, institutional)
correspond to various variables (Table 2) through which their respective scores are
calculated.
Ta
bl
e
2
. L
i
st o
f
var
i
a
bl
es cons
id
ere
d
i
n
C
DRI
fi
ve
di
mens
i
ons
Dimensions Variable considered
1. Physical Electricity, Water supply, Sanitation, Solid waste disposal,
Internal road network, Housing and land use,
Community assets, Warning system and evacuation
2. Social Health status, Education and awareness, Social capital
3. Economic Income, Employment, Households’ assets, Access to
financial service, Savings and insurance, Budget and
subsidy
Internal institutions and development plan, Effectiveness
of internal institutions, External institutions and networks
,
Institutional collaboration and coordination
4. Institutional
5. Natural
Hazard intensity, Hazard frequency
For example, under physical dimension of CDRI, there are eight variables including
electricity, water supply, sanitation, solid waste disposal, internal road network, housing
and land use, community assets, and warning system and evacuation. These variables
were chosen to better describe the vulnerability in each city as far as natural, physical,
social, economic, institutional dimensions of resilience (to hydrometeorological
disasters) are concerned. Rating scales are given the numbers 1, 2, 3, 4 corresponding to
very low, low, high and very high respectively. Therefore, WMI was calculated by
summing the product of the weights (given by city officials) to the index of each
variable (obtained from the sum of rating scales under any given variable divided by the

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number of elements) and finally dividing the whole by the number of variables in each
dimension. Overall CDRI values are obtained after averaging each of the five
dimensions’ resilience values.
It is important to note that the questionnaires were filled up by the city officials. The
quality of results is very much dependent on the data quality, and proper understanding
of the questionnaires. Needless to say, results presented in this paper are not absolute
values, but are broad policy guidance and scope of improvements in selected sectors of
the climate and disaster related problems in the respective cities.
For each city individual case, resilience information is presented as overall resilience
(combination of all five dimensions), and separate physical, social, economic and
institutional resilience. Overall resilience factor varies between 0 and 10. Physical,
social and institutional all have a range between 0 to 4, and economic resilience
between 0 and 6. Higher values of resilience are equivalent to higher preparedness to
cope with climate and disasters and inversely. Policy points and recommendations are
based on the results, and provide encouragement of city governments’ engagements in
specific cist services, institution and capacity building.
4. Results and Discussions
4.1. Overall results
Overall climate disaster resilience mapping (Fig. 1) shows higher values for Hue city
and City of San Fernando, La Union (hereafter referred to as San Fernando). Both are
ranged in the small size city classification. These results reflect higher preparedness to
cope with climate and disasters in those cities as far as the five dimensions of CDRI are
concerned (Fig. 2). However, individual city analysis revealed higher resilience of other
cities such as Yokohama and Bangkok (medium and Large size cities respectively) in
physical dimension, Colombo and Banda Aceh (both are small size cities) in natural
dimension, Iloilo (small size city) in social dimension, Danang and Yokohama (small
and medium size cities respectively) in economic dimension and finally Iloilo in
institutional dimension. In general, results showed strength and weaknesses in one
dimension or another. These results also show that the level of resilience was not found
specifically different for various city sizes. Cities belonging to the same size experience
different level of resilience, not only for overall CDRI but also for individual resilience
dimensions (physical, natural, etc.).
Policy recommendations for each city were based on these inputs to encourage city
governments, and other policy, decision makers to strengthen their engagements and
orient their efforts in a way that current and future potential risks are considered and
coped with in order to enhance the resilience of the urban systems and communities.
4.2. Resilience analysis for each city
In each of the nine cities analyzed in this study, a brief description of their resilience
according to the five dimensions of CDRI is presented. Based on those results, policy
recommendations for decision makers are suggested in order to assist these stakeholders
in their efforts to enhance the resilience of their respective cities.

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4.2.1. Banda Aceh
Analysis result for Banda Aceh
Although the city shows an overall high value in CDRI, various points need to be
mentioned. In physical dimension, while other parameters seem to show a relatively
promising level, warning system and evacuation and water supply appear to have lower
scores. Tsunami recovery programs have helped in building stronger social capital,
enhanced community and household assets and better employment opportunities.
However weaker education and awareness and health status reduces the city’s overall
social dimension of resilience. Likewise, budget and subsidy as well as income source
showed lower scores. Institutional dimension of resilience was handicapped by a lower
internal institutions and development plan value. This illustrates the gaps in the
incorporation of disaster risk and climate change into development plans. Finally,
Banda Aceh’s natural dimension of resilience was found higher compared to other
cities’.
Policy recommendations for Banda Aceh
• Banda Aceh experienced tsunami and recovery process and has contributed
significantly to the disaster risk reduction aspects. However, Banda Aceh’s
institutional and physical resilience have scope for further improvement along with
more investment in risk reduction initiatives. There is a need to have additional
focus on early warning and water supply system which would collectively improve
the city’s overall resilience.
• Dedicated budget and subsidies may be offered to boost investment in risk reduction
activities and increase present level of household income.
• Education and awareness, as well as health status in general are dwindling the social
dimension of resilience. The city needs to address root causes of the problem to
reduce vulnerability and enhance awareness and health.
• Effective mainstreaming of risk reduction in governance and institutions is required
which will lead to enhance economic resilience as well.
4.2.2. Bangkok city
Analysis result for Bangkok
Considering overall dimensions of resilience, Bangkok city appears to be quite exposed
to hazards which could undermine the city’s efforts to enhance resilience. Similar to the
case of Banda Aceh, internal institutions and development plan – proxy for the
incorporation of disaster risk and climate change into the city’s development plan – was
shown with less consideration. Early warning and evacuation system run down the
overall physical dimension of resilience. Unlike the other elements of social dimension,
community participation appeared to be slightly low. Access to financial services as
well as less income source was among the fragile points as far as economic dimension
of resilience is concerned
Policy recommendations for Bangkok
• Inputs for strengthening institutional capital and increasing budgetary incentives for
disaster risk reduction is important to enhance resilience of Bangkok.

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0
2
4
6
8
BandaAceh
Bangkok
Colombo
Danang
HueIloilo
Mumbai
SanFernando
Yokohama
City'sResilienceMappingbased
onCDRI
0
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6
8
10
BandaAceh
Bangkok
Colombo
Danang
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Mumbai
SanFernando
Yokoh ama
Physicaldimension
0
1
2
3
4
BandaAceh
Bangkok
Colombo
Danang
HueIloilo
Mumbai
SanFernando
Yokohama
Naturaldimension
0
2
4
6
8
10
12
BandaAceh
Bangkok
Colombo
Danang
HueIloilo
Mumbai
SanFernando
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Socialdimension
0
1
2
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Colombo
Danang
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Mumbai
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Institutionaldimension
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Economicdimension
Fig. 1. Overall Resilience Mapping for the cities

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• Significant efforts are underway to improve health status and education levels.
However, additional focus through proactive community participation programs
might help building city’s social resilience.
• Disaster risk reduction mainstreaming with existing developmental activities and
planning will be a major incentive that Bangkok needs to offer quickly. Similarly
internal institutions may be further developed to take lead in this aspect.
• Widening insurance base for risk coverage and improvement of warning and
evacuation system will play complimentary role in building physical and economic
resilience of the city as a whole.
• Enhanced access to financial services could be linked with built-in risk reduction
mechanism to complement resilience in different spheres.
4.2.3. Colombo city
Analysis result for Colombo
Colombo city shows the highest natural dimension of resilience as compared to other
cities considered in this study. As for the physical dimension, warning and evacuation
system, followed by solid waste disposal showed lower values compared to other
variables. Also, community participation seems to be fragile in the city. While
employment and household assets were well considered, savings and insurance, budget
and subsidy and diversification of income source presented lower scores. Finally, the
inclusion and consideration of risk and uncertainty was less reflected in the city’s
development plan.
Policy recommendations for Colombo
• Overall, Colombo’s climate disaster resilience requires synergetic yet parallel
attention to physical, social, economic and institutional dimensions.
• Institutional resilience needs considerable attention along with support from
economic front i.e. diversified sources to raise incomes, budget and subsidy to risk
reduction activities, and widening savings and insurance base.
• Municipal services especially water supply and solid waste management needs
upheaval to ease stress in daily lives of the communities and enhance physical
resilience.
• Warning and evacuation system needs an overhaul with corrective measures to built
social capital through massive awareness across sectors and scales.
Resilience based development planning and effective involvement of multiple
stakeholders will be an asset to strengthen the institutional resilience of Colombo.
4.2.4. Danang city
Analysis result for Danang
Physical dimension of resilience is threatened by the fragile warning systems and solid
waste management. Similar case is observed for education and awareness in social
dimension and income source, budget and subsidy in economic dimension. Institutional
collaboration during disasters appears to be the fragile element for institutional
dimension.
Policy recommendations for Danang

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• Physical dimension of Danang’s resilience calls for immediate improvement
specifically in improving warning systems and solid waste management.
• Strong social capital need to be strategically complemented to enhance education
and awareness and health status among masses.
• Budgetary provisions for risk reduction are skewed and would require the city to
devote incremental share of developmental budget towards this.
• Savings and insurance are promising however, the city need to facilitate access to
financial resources.
• Risk reduction is a development agenda for most organizations in Danang but better
coordination is also needed for making resiliency concerns more effective.
4.2.5. Hue city
Analysis result for Hue
Hue city figures among the cities with the highest values for CDRI despite its fragile
position with natural dimension of resilience. This strength may be due to a more
pronounced social and institutional resilience. However, incorporation of disaster risk
and uncertainty in developmental plans is may weaken the city’s institutional resilience.
Importantly, income source as well as budget and subsidy may trim down the stable
employment, household assets, savings and insurance that are the strength of the
economic dimension of resilience.
Policy recommendations for Hue
• Risk reduction should receive high priority in education to aware people as social
dimension of resilience in Hue is going to alter overall resilience efforts in the city.
• Warning systems and evacuation has room for further improvement to address
growing climate induced risks. Additionally, improvements in housing conditions
and land use planning will certainly boost physical resilience.
• Employment rate is high but low income earning opportunities are a cause of
concern and can be improved by entrepreneurial development by offering better
access to financial services.
• Leveraging on high social capital, augmenting education opportunities, improving
health status and making aware common people about impending risks can be
initiated.
• Local institutions in Hue can resolve to mainstream disaster risk reduction into
development plans and incentivize DRR activities through dovetailing budget and
subsidy.
4.2.6. Iloilo city
Analysis result for Iloilo
In physical dimension, water supply and warning and evacuation system showed poorer
scores and may threaten the enhancement of resilience of communities (Figure 2). A
similar case is found with social capital in social resilience. In the case of economic
dimension, budget and subsidy as well as savings and insurance both showed lower
values indicating the fragility of this dimension. Finally, the inclusion and consideration
of risk and uncertainty was less reflected in the city’s development plan, thus lessening
the institutional resilience of the city.
Policy recommendations for Iloilo

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• Social capital of Iloilo needs specific impetus as it has great potential to influence
the other dimensions of resilience.
• In general, basic services of the city (especially water supply, sanitation, solid waste
management, internal access roads) calls for significant improvement by following
participatory community based urban improvement techniques which would also
benefit in building social cohesiveness.
• Low-income employment prevails in the city and climate-disaster resilient
livelihood options can be generated by improving access to financial services and
built-in insurance to safeguard development gains.
• Institutional collaboration can be more effective if networked well with external
institutions by dovetailing risk reduction measures in development planning and
implementation.
• Updated early warning systems availability with responsible institutions and
ensuring effective penetration of warning in vulnerable locations during disasters
may be treated as priority.
Fig. 2. Resilience mapping for Iloilo city
4.2.7. Mumbai city
Analysis result for Mumbai
Overall climate-disaster resilience is relatively low for Mumbai City. It was also the
case of social dimension of resilience characterized by a dwindling social capital.
Despite being renowned for its status of commercial, financial and entertainment capital
of India, Mumbai city appears to lack of financial services, budget and subsidy as well
as savings and insurance. Concerning physical dimension, early warning system and

13
evacuation, internal road network, solid waste disposal and water supply demonstrate
the low extreme values which will have tremendous effect on the city’s resilience.
Similarly, aside from external institutions and networks, the city represents a fragile
institutional dimension of resilience.
Policy recommendations for Mumbai
• Overall climate-disaster resilience of Mumbai is relatively low and calls for an
urgent attention of stakeholders from and beyond the city. Sustained efforts are
specifically needed to strengthen physical, social and institutional dimensions of
resilience.
• Dismal picture of city-wide basic services is a major stumbling block on the road to
physical resilience and solid waste management, water supply, internal roads,
sanitation and warning mechanism requires immediate interventions for
improvement.
• Recurring floods have already helped create awareness among common people. By
capitalizing on this, civic societies and local government should focus on building
social resilience.
• The city needs to leverage on existing reasonable level of income and employment
opportunities for crafting savings and insurance mechanism for the urban poor the
augment their economic resilience.
• Local institutions responsible for city development have good external network, but
need to effectively address climate-disaster issues by wider and broader cooperation
with other institutions and also by mainstreaming disaster risk reduction in the
development agenda.
4.2.8. City of San Fernando, La Union
Analysis result for San Fernando
Early warning systems and evacuation procedures, sanitation, and solid waste disposal
put the city at a hard position and may alter its efforts in enhancing resilience as far as
physical dimension is concerned. Although granted with a well characterized social and
institutional dimension, San Fernando shows a fragile natural and economic resilience.
The latter is characterized by low budget and subsidy as well as savings and insurance.
Policy recommendations for San Fernando
• Overall, San-Fernando should benefit from its high social capital and institutional
capacities to improve physical and economic dimensions of resilience.
• Early warning systems, evacuation procedures, sanitation, solid waste management
and housing calls for sustained investment for fortifying physical resilience.
• Budget and subsidy on risk reduction, income levels of people and savings and
insurance patterns - all affects economic resilience and requires improvement.
• Leveraging on existing high social capital, education and health status of the
populace can be upgraded further.
• In order to get most out of present institutional strengths, ‘climate-disaster
resilience’ should be accorded a development planning priority.
4.2.9. Yokohama
Analysis result for Yokohama

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Physical dimension of resilience is relatively well equipped compared to other cities,
with the exception of lower warning system and community assets. Less diversification
of income, lack of budget and subsidy and access to financial service are the burden that
may lessen economic dimension of resilience. Also, despite having stronger networks,
the city exhibits less incorporation of disaster risk and uncertainty in development plans.
This fact may alter the institutional dimension of resilience of the city.
Policy recommendations for Yokohama
• Being a port city from developed country, Yokohama needs to increase financial
incentives for insuring lives and assets to climate induced disasters.
• Livelihood diversification to widen the employment base and income levels may be
considered as probable options to promote economic resilience.
• Warning and evacuation system strengthening and community asset building are
two prominent areas that require attention to addressing shortcomings in physical
resilience.
• Developmental planning organizations of the city are although networked well, also
needed better external linkages and placing disaster risk resilience at forefront.
• Innovative means of education and awareness tools will help in uplifting and
renewing existing social capital and interest of well informed and literate
communities of Yokohama.
5. Conclusions and Implications
Findings in this study showed that various types of vulnerability were found for each
target city. Based on those differences, policy points and recommendations to be
provided to city governments and other stakeholders also differ. However, overall
recommendations are converging to one goal: the enhancement of community resilience
in the face of climate related disasters.
This climate and disaster resilience initiative is in its development stage. Through the
data collection and questionnaire analysis, city resilience mapping is conducted, which
has different components of physical, social, economic, institutional and natural aspects.
Based on these findings, policy suggestions were made.
As mentioned earlier, the data is mainly based on questionnaire survey. Where the
questionnaires were incomplete, secondary sources and subjective observations were
made. Needless to say, there are further scopes to improve the methodology and data
collection process.
User feedback on the CDRI methodology is of utmost importance. The goal of the
whole process of CDRI is to make city managers and practitioners aware of the existing
and future city risk for climate related disasters. The policy suggestions should be linked
to specific actions at the city and community level.
As implications of the present climate disaster resilience study, CDRI can be further
developed in two specific ways:
• City based in-depth data collection, which can focus on the organization of small
city level workshops to validate the data, and improve the methodology through
mutual learning among the city professionals and researchers;
• To use CDRI in ward or neighborhood level. Since CDRI is non-scale, it can be
used for a city, ward or neighborhood level. Ideally, it is desirable that CDRI be
used in the neighborhood level, and through detailed data collection, the city should

15
be able to get a clear resilience map of its own, and identify the vulnerable areas as
well as future potential areas.
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