GDRC journal article published in special themed IJDRBE
Wed, 18 Feb 2015 14:46:00 GMT
A journal article entitled: "A disaster resilient built environment in urban cities: The need to empower local governments", written by GDRC’s Dr Chamindi Malalgoda and Professor Dilanthi Amaratunga has just been published in the special themed issue of the International Journal of Disaster Resilience in the Built Environment (IJDRBE) Vol. 6 Issue: 1, pp.102 – 116 on the “State of DRR at the Local Level”: A 2015 Report on the Patterns of Disaster Risk Reduction Actions at Local Level, guest edited by Jerry Velasquez, United Nations International Strategy for Disaster Reduction (UNISDR). This special issue will be launched at the UN World conference on Disaster Risk Reduction to be held in Sendai City, Japan from 14 to 18 March 2015. There will be more details on this themed issue in the coming weeks and also about the Sendai World Conference.
This research aims at making recommendations to empower the Sri Lankan local governments in creating a disaster resilient built environment. Disasters make a huge impact on the built environment. In turn, failure of the built environment can create significant impacts on social and economic activities. Thus, when moving towards safer cities, it is important to develop the built environment in such a way that it can withstand threats posed by natural disasters. Various stakeholders need to get involved in the process of making a disaster resilient built environment, of which the local governments need to play a critical role, as they are the closest government body to the local community. However, local governments are facing a number of challenges in responding to city resilience activities. The paper highlights the challenges faced by the local governments in creating a disaster resilient built environment within Sri Lankan cities and provides recommendations as to how the local governments could be empowered in creating a disaster resilient built environment within cities.
Full paper is available at: http://www.emeraldinsight.com/doi/abs/10.1108/IJDRBE-10-2014-0071
