Assessing the Disaster Resilience of Megacities: The Case of Hong Kong

Timothy Sim, Dongming Wang and Ziqiang Han
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Timothy Sim: Department of Applied Social Sciences, The Hong Kong Polytechnic University, Hong Kong, China
Dongming Wang: National Disaster Reduction Centre of China, Ministry of Civil Affairs, Beijing 100124, China
Ziqiang Han: Department of Applied Social Sciences, The Hong Kong Polytechnic University, Hong Kong, China

Sustainability, 2018, vol. 10, issue 4, 1-16

Abstract: Many megacities are facing potential threats from various disasters, especially in the face of climate change. However, evaluating the resilience of megacities is not well established in both the academia and practice field. Using Hong Kong, which is a megacity ranked as the city in Asia with the highest risk for natural disasters, as a case study, we demonstrated the effort of assessing the resilience of a megacity. The Sendai Framework Local Urban Indicators Tools that was developed by the United Nation Office for Disaster Risk Reduction (UNISDR) was adopted as the main tool in this study, and a mixed bottom-up participatory and top-down method was utilized in the evaluation process. This is an innovative and participatory approach that is not commonly adopted in assessing the resilience of cities. The study found that Hong Kong is disaster resilient in that it mainstreams disaster risk in its development and that it dedicates sufficient financial resources. However, Hong Kong may improve on its disaster governance and encourage cooperation between the government and society to identify disaster risk and share information, particularly in the face of climate change and calls for more sustainable development.

Keywords: Hong Kong; disaster risk reduction; resilience; UNISDR Sendai Framework (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O13 Q Q0 Q2 Q3 Q5 Q56 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2018
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (10)

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