Data and Innovation: Addressing Risk in Urban Areas for Vulnerable Urban Population and Communities

ICLEI – Local Governments for sustainability along with UNDP and UNICEF, will explore the use of quantitative and spatial assessments of urban areas to identify risks for the most vulnerable urban population. This session will look at Risk-Informed Decision Making (RIDM) and programming—a structured process that decision-makers use to make more complex decisions by considering risks associated with development interventions, especially in public investment planning and sectorial planning.

The ICLEI ACCCRN Process (IAP) toolkit, which enables local governments to assess their climate risks in the context of urbanization, poverty and vulnerability; and formulate corresponding resilience strategies will be highlighted. The IAP provides a streamlined process that is simple and yet rigorous, and which can be implemented by the local governments to build climate resilience.

The Child-Centered Risk Assessment (CCRA) tool will be highlighted and how the CCRA is being used to assess vulnerabilities faced by children and marginalized urban communities. By using vulnerability information, spatial mapping of disaster and climate risk, CCRAs strengthen the capacity for UNICEF and partners to conduct child sensitive programming and address underlying drivers of risk and improving preparedness efforts.

UNDP will highlight its disaster risk related interventions in countries and cities. By adopting innovation (i.e. data driven), UNDP has been able to successfully improve the effectiveness of its interventions. UNDP's collaboration with governments, the private sector (Microsoft, Fujitsu, Facebook, Viber, WeChat) and other partners in co-creating data-driven approaches to reducing risk, as strengthening policies and institutional frameworks on disaster risk management will also be highlighted.

This session will touch upon the importance of using disaggregated data to show how vulnerabilities can vary in one urban area and how intra-urban inequalities can be masked by averages. The session will also explore how overlaying demographic data, poverty and human settlements data, and hazard data can be used to map out multiple hazards in one urban area. Concrete examples where ICLEI South Asia, UNDP and UNICEF have used data and innovation to identify the most vulnerable population and settlements in Asian cities will be presented.