City Resilience Program

Today is the first day of the Livable Cities Academy: Integrated Urban Flood Risk Management, a week-long workshop co-hosted by the City Resilience Program, whose aim is to equip African cities with the knowledge and skills to reduce flood risk.    Delegates from 18 cities across the continent are     🌊 learning about the key determinants of flood risk   🗺️ practicing creating maps showing risk exposure, and   📊 witnessing how flood risk data can lead to improved decision-making.     Tomorrow, participants will delve further into the options for mitigating and adapting to urban flood risk, and they will tackle the man-made phenomena that turn floods into disasters, answering questions such as: ♻️ How can you stop #solidwaste from blocking drains? 🏝️ How can effective coastal flood control be implemented? 🌱What are the opportunities for #naturebasedsolutions? Thanks to all of the speakers and co-organisers: Agence Française de Développement in Southern Africa (Audrey Rojkoff, Samuel LEFEVRE, Audrey Guiral-Naepels), the City Climate Finance Gap Fund, #CICLIA, the The World Bank (Ana Campos Garcia, Mathijs Van Ledden, Sheenagh Bruce), Richard Nell and Mayor Geordin Hill-Lewis from the City of Cape Town, and Jonathan Reghev from the Centre for Climate Adaptation, Technology, and Environment at Københavns Kommune. And to the city delegates who are putting themselves through this experience – we hope it's a rewarding one – welcome! SECO Economic Cooperation and Development Bundesministerium für Finanzen

Next week, we launch the Livable Cities Academy: Integrated Urban Flood Risk Management in Cape Town, South Africa. The City Resilience Program is hosting this five-day workshop together with the Agence Française de Développement, The World Bank, and the City Climate Finance Gap Fund. Why? Because the number of flood events in Sub-Saharan Africa has increased five-fold since the 1990s, and in the last decade they accounted for two thirds of disaster events in the region. Informal urban settlements are particularly at risk. The Academy will equip municipal officials from cities across Africa with the knowledge and skills to advance solutions to their cities’ flood-related challenges. Invited delegates will interact with technical experts in urban planning, disaster risk management and climate finance, deepening their understanding of urban flood risk management techniques, wider resilience and adaptation opportunities and sharing their experience of flood risks and mitigation measures. After a week of interactive sessions, site visits, peer-to-peer knowledge-sharing workshops and action-planning sessions, participants will leave Cape Town better able to tackle urban flood-related challenges and with greater knowledge on how to access funding and financing for their resilience investments.      Bundesministerium für Finanzen, SECO Economic Cooperation and Development ,Global Facility for Disaster Reduction and Recovery (GFDRR), Ross Eisenberg, Duru Oksuz, Augustin Maria, Zoe Trohanis, Satu Kahkonen, Ashor Sarupen, National Treasury of South Africa, Guangzhe Chen, Audrey Rojkoff, Geordin Hill-Lewis, City of Cape Town, Daniel Sullivan, Ming Zhang, Peter Ellis, Michel Matera, Eric Dickson, Gerhard Pienaar, Jimmy Skenderovic, Romana Königsbrun, Samuel LEFEVRE, ICLEI, Global Covenant of Mayors for Climate & Energy (GCoM), World Resources Institute, C40 Cities

Check it out! The Africa Urban, Resilience, and Land team at the World Bank is hiring an Urban Resilience Extended Term Consultant (ETC) in Bujumbura, Burundi, to support the local work program on climate-resilience. #jobopportunity #urbanresilience #drm #burundi

Burundi is one of the world's poorest countries, and among the most vulnerable to climate change. This summer, The World Bank approved the US$113 million “Urban Resilience Emergency Project” which will address Burundi's urgent climate risks and implement essential flood risk mitigation measures. The City Resilience Program’s support to the analytical work led by the World Bank’s East Africa Urban and Disaster Risk Management task team underpins the design for this important project: CRP supported an assessment on the flood risks and hazards facing the cities of Bujumbura and Gatumba funded by the Global Facility for Disaster Reduction and Recovery (GFDRR) and implemented by our partner Jeremy Benn Associates (JBA Consulting). The assessment revealed that damages from flooding cost the cities US$36 million each year and impact 72% of the densest settlement areas and was instrumental in determining project investments and component design. CRP is continuing to analyze critical urban disaster risks in the Great Lakes region and elsewhere – a crucial step towards addressing them.   #GFDRR #CityResilience #FloodMitigation #Burundi

🚍 What are the links between the transportation sector, extreme heat, and our health - and how can we strengthen transport systems’ heat resilience? We spoke with Nick Jones, data scientist at the Global Facility for Disaster Reduction and Recovery (GFDRR), The World Bank and co-author of "We need to prepare our transport systems for heatwaves — here’s how" to find out: https://lnkd.in/evMneK7X Satish Ukkusuri / Shagun Mittal / Purdue University / University of Birmingham EPFL / Federal University of Rio de Janeiro

This summer, temperature records are being broken around the world, putting lives and livelihoods at risk. Check out this article in Nature Magazine developed by an expert panel including Global Facility for Disaster Reduction and Recovery (GFDRR)'s Nick Jones and Natalia Romero, who have led City Resilience Program work on extreme urban heat and infrastructure. Here they show how transport systems – vitally important infrastructure for cities – are being hit hard by rising temperatures, and they provide a roadmap (excuse the pun) on how to strengthen heat resilience and keep the world moving.

We are thrilled to announce a new working paper co-authored by the City Resilience Program's Ross Eisenberg which highlights the challenges of adapting power systems to a changed climate: "Assessing Power System Disruptions and Associated Economic Impacts from Increasing Extreme Heat Events in Southeast Europe Using an Idealized Design Methodology" Using advanced climate simulations from ClimateAi and focusing on cities in and around the #WesternBalkans, the paper estimates how much more frequent and severe extreme heat events will be in future, and how often they will cause power disruptions. It finds that these cities may be at risk of an estimated 4 to 9 power system disruptions per decade due to increasing #extremeheat events, between now and 2070, and that these outages may cost cities tens of millions of dollars per year and pose a significant risk to human health. To mitigate power system fragility during heat waves, the paper recommends implementing measures such as: 🔋 securing reserve power capacity 🌳 promoting urban cooling through greening initiatives 🚦 adopting demand-side management with smart-grid infrastructure ☀️ increasing the deployment of solar power, which typically has high generation potential during heat waves. Thanks to David Farnham from ClimateAI for leading the work and to Luc Bonnafous for the initiative. Read, share and learn more here: https://lnkd.in/dRuhHG5y

Check out this post describing the Global Facility for Disaster Reduction and Recovery (GFDRR)'s long-term work to reduce disaster risk in Ghana.    The City Resilience Program is contributing by supporting efforts to mobilize private investment in solid waste management systems in Accra and beyond, because failing to manage solid waste increases the frequency and severity of urban floods.

“Work with the community, not just for them”, says Daniel Sullivan, Director of Resilience at the City of Cape Town. Communities can play a crucial role in building #urbanresilience. Through City Resilience Program and Global Facility for Disaster Reduction and Recovery (GFDRR)'s support to South African cities, Cape Town engaged local communities to collect original data on extreme temperatures in their neighborhoods. This collaborative effort helped build awareness about #extremeheat and its effects among public officials and residents, while mapping the city's critical heat hotspots. The results from this campaign are informing communities on effectively managing heat risks and enhancing their resilience to #climatechange. Watch the interview below to learn more. 🎥 https://lnkd.in/d9zGu74N #UnderstandingRisk #UR24 #CapeTown #CORC City Resilience Program Global Facility for Disaster Reduction and Recovery (GFDRR) The World Bank Daniel Sullivan Leonardo Valente

This month the City Resilience Program says goodbye to Program Manager Rob Pilkington, CFA and welcomes Christian Eghoff who will henceforth lead our efforts to increase urban resilience worldwide.   In the four years in which Rob (pictured at a lectern) has led the program, CRP has supported cities on four continents in reducing disaster risk and influenced $3.4 billion in approved financing for resilience-related investments. He is moving to the The World Bank's Middle East and North Africa regional office in Beirut, Lebanon, where he will continue to work on securing public and private funding for urban resilience.   Christian (pictured with fishing nets) is a Danish national who has worked for the World Bank since 2004 in in Washington DC, Mali and the Democratic Republic of the Congo and contributed to operations numerous countries in Africa and the Middle East. A Senior Urban Development Specialist, he joins CRP from a position in Kinshasa, where he has led the growth of a $600 million World Bank project portfolio across sectors including urban development, urban resilience, and Disaster Risk Management.   On joining the team, Christian said: "The urban resilience agenda is at the forefront of a broad range of development challenges, and CRP is more relevant than ever ensuring the World Bank's engagement in cities has strong foundations. I look forward to joining a great team and contributing to CRP's continued growth."   Rob, thank you for your leadership. Christian, welcome!