Tomorrow Cities - engaging communities in structural resilience

As the negative impacts of natural hazards continue to escalate around the world due to increasing populations, climate change, and rapid urbanisation (among other factors and processes), there is an urgent requirement to develop structured and operational approaches towards multi-hazard risk-informed decision making on urban planning and design. This is a particularly pressing issue for low-to-middle income countries, which are set to be impacted ever more disproportionately during future natural-hazard events if the “business as usual” urban-development approach continues unabated. Urban poor residents of these countries will significantly suffer under risk-insensitive development trajectories.

To address this crucial challenge, we introduced the Tomorrow’s Cities Decision Support Environment (TCDSE). The TCDSE facilitates a participatory, people-centered approach to risk-informed decision making, using state-of-the-art procedures for physics-based hazard and engineering impact modelling, integrating physical and social vulnerability in a unified framework, and expressing the consequences of future disasters across an array of stakeholder-weighted impact metrics that facilitate democratisation of the risk concept.

This lecture primarily covered:

• the successful deployments of the TCDSE in the city of Rapti, Nepal, a rapidly expanding urban area that lacks formal planning and is increasingly exposed to floods, earthquakes, and landslides

• the promising potential of the TCDSE to help minimise future urban risk creation in this context

• an open discussion on the general capabilities of the TCDSE to shape policy changes that ultimately lead to risk-informed urban futures

Tomorrow Cities - engaging communities in structural resilience: supporting a provincial masterplan

Speakers

Roberto Gentile Associate Professor, UCL

Roberto is an Associate Professor of Catastrophe Risk Modelling in the UCL’s Department of Risk & Disaster Reduction (RDR) since October 2024. He is a Chartered Structural Engineer in Italy (and Europe) since 2015. His research integrates civil engineering and disaster resilience, advancing risk/loss assessment approaches and developing innovative risk-targeted infrastructure design methodologies. His work has been used by governments, private sector, and practitioners.

Vibek Manandhar Consortium Manager, People in Need

Vibek is a Structural Engineer and Disaster Risk Professional with over 12 years of experience in the field of DRR and Infrastructure Resilience. He led the Nepal component of the Tomorrow’s Cities project, coordinating the development and implementation of the TCDSE in Rapti. His expertise lies in structural and earthquake engineering, multi-hazard risk assessment, and climate-sensitive urban planning. He has co-authored peer-reviewed research, contributed to global dialogues on risk reduction, and led high-impact capacity building initiatives.