Urban Resilience
Prof Suzanne Wilkinson
Programme Leader
The University of Auckland
Background
Over 80% of New Zealand’s population live in our urban areas, and growth in these cities continues to rise. Auckland will have more than 60% of New Zealand’s population growth over the next 30 years, and the city is prone to a wide range of natural hazards. With a focus on Auckland, the Resilient Cities programme is working to create new knowledge and to integrate, implement and build on tools that enable cities in New Zealand to adapt and transform with urban change whilst building their resilience to natural hazards.
This is being done through the development of a framework for evaluating city resilience to natural hazards in the New Zealand context, and by building an inter-city expertise collaborative network to advance implementation of resilience tools and measures. Case studies based in Auckland are also being used to develop an operating Resilient Cities model.
Feature: Student Profile
Niransha Rodrigo
Niransha is an Urban programme PhD student studying ‘Anchor Projects’ which are intended to boost local recovery after a natural disaster.
Projects
1
Resilient Cities Network Development
Developing a consensus of solutions (resilience tools, measures and indicators) that will create a New Zealand city resilient to natural hazards.
Project lead: Prof Suzanne Wilkinson
Host: The University of Auckland
2
Resilient Auckland Planning
Placing the Auckland Council’s Strategic Plan under a resilience “lens” to trace future land use under planned scenarios of population and economic growth. The project is testing longer-term simulated environments in Auckland, and reporting key resilience measures for the different options.
Project lead: Dr Garry McDonald
Host: Market Economics and University of Auckland
3
Resilient Auckland Communities
Developing resilient Auckland communities, with a focus on African, Pacific Island, Refugee and Asian communities.
Project lead: Assoc Prof Jay Marlowe and Prof Andreas Neef
Host: The University of Auckland
4
Resilient Auckland Businesses
Identifying vulnerabilities in the business sector, and assisting with the development and testing of mechanisms to make Auckland businesses resilient.
Project lead: Dr Alice Chang-Richards
Host: The University of Auckland
5
Resilient Auckland Infrastructure
Developing and testing resilience indicators for infrastructure networks with an initial focus on transport for the Auckland region, then moving onto other infrastructure types (water, electricity, telecommunications).
Project lead: Assoc Prof Seosamh Costello
Host: The University of Auckland
6
Resilience in Auckland’s South East Asian Communities
This project, funded through the Challenge’s contestable funding process in 2017, is working to understand how particular South East Asian communities (Cambodian, Indonesian, Malaysian, Philippine, Thai and Vietnamese) identify, conceptualise and prepare for natural hazards in Auckland.
Project lead: Dr Jesse Grayman
Host: The University of Auckland
Feature: The role of Buddhist pagodas in Auckland’s natural disaster preparedness, response and recovery
Around 8% of Auckland’s population doesn’t speak English, and these people are particularly vulnerable during a natural disaster.
Places of worship such as Buddhist pagodas might have a role to play before, during and after a natural disaster for the resilience of South East Asian communities.
Key Achievements
Resilience of migrant groups
In a current project looking at resilience in Auckland communities, we are interviewing members of key migrant groups (African, Pacific Island, South East Asian). The work of this project was heavily featured in this article in NZ Geographic.
PhD students
The PhD team aligned with this programme has grown to 6 with a new PhD student starting on 1 March 2018, looking at ‘Business Resilience and Best Practice’.
Stakeholders
Significant, regular stakeholder engagement nationally and regionally, in particular with Auckland Council. Already Auckland Council is changing the way it integrates resilience into its planning.
City-to-city network development project
We completed the first phase of a city-to-city network development project, which was an evaluation of the current state of resilience of the seven biggest cities in NZ: Auckland, Wellington, Christchurch, Hamilton, Tauranga, Napier and Dunedin. The findings from this study were published in the report: “Building Urban Resilience in New Zealand: Lessons from our Major Cities”, available here.
Auckland Resilience
The first phase of an Auckland resilience assessments project based on the UNISDR Local Urban Indicators (LUI) tool was completed, and a report was generated for Auckland Council to consider in developing their future resilience plans.
Feature: Resilience in civil infrastructure firms
Civil infrastructure firms fix our roads, power lines and sewers after natural hazard events like earthquakes. Their services are vital to our recovery after an event, but how resilient are the businesses themselves?
Thesis Research Students
Ede Odiase (PhD at The University of Auckland) – Urbanisation and Disaster Risk: Assessing the Resilience of Urban Communities in Auckland to the Risk of Natural Hazards.
Heiman Dianat (PhD at The University of Auckland) – Assessing Auckland City Resilience: Lessons from Using the Local Urban Indicators (LUI) Assessment Tool.
April Ayral (PhD at The University of Auckland) – Community Resilience to improve postdisaster recovery through build back better: A case from Nepal earthquake.
Mostafa Baghersad (PhD at The University of Auckland) – Developing a tool for assessing and improving the resilience of water supply system.
Elrasheid Elkhidir (PhD at The University of Auckland) – Development of an urban collaboration mode to improve resilience in New Zealand.
Gerald Kwazu (PhD at The University of Auckland) – Business resilience and the best practice.
Marina Drazba (PhD at The University of Auckland) – Managing the risk, not the disaster. Building community resilience in the face of Landslide Risk.
Affiliated with other Resilience Challenge programmes
Robert Cardwell (PhD at The University of Auckland) – Application of Integrated Land Use – Economic Models to Hazard Management Strategy and Planning (Economics programme)
Mujaddad Afzal (PhD at The University of Auckland) – Mass evacuation of cities under impending natural hazards (Infrastructure programme)
Feature: Student Profile
Heiman Dianat
Originally from Iran, Heiman holds a bachelor’s degree in civil engineering and has experience in the construction industry.
Heiman’s PhD project aims to assess Auckland’s disaster resilience based on the United Nations International Strategy for Disaster Reduction.
Selected publications
Marlowe, J., Neef, A., Tevaga, C. A., Tevaga, C. (2018). A New Guiding Framework for Engaging Diverse Populations in Disaster Risk Reduction: Reach, Relevance, Receptiveness, and Relationships. International Journal of Disaster Risk Science. https://doi.org/10.1007/s13753-018-0193-6
Mannakkara, S. & Wilkinson, S. (eds) (2017). Building Urban Resilience in New Zealand: Lessons from our major cities. Centre for Disaster Resilience, Recovery and Reconstruction, University of Auckland. https://www.resiliencechallenge.nz/Resilience-Home/Key-Documents/Publications/2017
Aliakbarlou, S., Wilkinson, S., Costello, SB & Jang, H. (2017). Client values within post-disaster reconstruction contracting services, Disaster Prevention and Management: An International Journal 26 (3), 348-360
Chang-Richards, Y., Wilkinson, S., Seville, E. & Brunsdon, D. (2017). An organizational capability framework for earthquake recovery, Earthquake Spectra. https://doi.org/10.1193/092515EQS142M
Egbelakin, T., Wilkinson, S., Ingham, J., Potangaroa, R. & Sajoudi, M. (2017). Incentives and Motivators for Improving Building Resilience to Earthquake Disaster, Natural Hazards Review 18 (4), 04017008