Urban Disaster Risk and Safe Shelter

A Networking Event for the Fourth Session of the World Urban Forum (WUF4)

Date:  3 to 6 November 2008
Place:  Nanjing, China
Venue: Nanjing International Exhibition Center
URL:   http://www.wuf4.com/_siteid/126/main.aspy

The Asian Disaster Preparedness Center and its partner, the Asia-Pacific Office of Habitat for Humanity International, will host the networking event on Urban Disaster Risk and Safe Shelter.

This networking event will focus on safe housing and shelter needs of the urban poor in the contexts of risk mitigation and reconstruction. 

Reducing urban disaster risk requires understanding the social, political and economic processes that create vulnerability.  For the housing sector, vulnerability must be periodically re-integrated as risk specifications for construction regulations, and then use a holistic approach to guide people’s choices and actions towards observing these.  For housing reconstruction in either post-disaster or post-conflict situations, other sectors such as water, education and economic and social “livelihoods” should be integrated within a transitional settlement approach. 

At the end of the session, the participants will:

1. Be aware of the key issues and challenges in addressing the need of the poor for safe shelter in the context urban disaster risk;

2. Learn from the global successful experiences of the Asia Disaster Preparedness Center and Habitat for Humanity in urban disaster risk mitigation and response as these relate to the need  for safe shelter; and

3. Synthesize the successful experiences into a typology or theoretical model for an effective delivery of safe shelter in an urban disaster mitigation and response context to guide future initiatives.

Topics in this section:

• Event home

• Framework for the Session

• About the Session Hosts

• General Information on WUF4