The Role of the Spatial Network in Urban Disaster Risk Variations:Reimagining the Notion of Spatial Vulnerability at the Urban Scale

The notion of“spatial vulnerability”is present in most disaster studies with a strong geographical connotation and accordingly is adopted at all scales,including the urban.While enabling mapping and visualizing risk patterns at macroscales,this geocentric foundation fails to capture disaster risk dynamics associated with the urban spatial network—an element that plays a significant role in the everyday and emergency functioning of cities,enabling users'movement and interaction.Yet,urban vulnerability assessment overlooks this aspect and thus leaves urban disaster risk mechanisms partially unexplored.This study investigated the role of the network of urban public open spaces(UPOS)in the creation and progression of urban disaster risk in earthquake-prone settlements.Through a multimethod approach that integrates quantitative and qualitative methods and explores spatial configuration,planning policies,and practices of use of UPOS in everyday and emergency scenarios,our study demonstrated that UPOS configuration plays an active role in urban disaster risk.Urban public open spaces impact risk by influencing the exposure of pedestrians and their capacity for self-protection.The study further reconceptualized spatial vulnerability at the urban scale,as the fraction of vulnerability associated to the spatial network,highlighting the interplay of planning policies and spatial practices in its production and progression.Our findings make the notion of spatial vulnerability less ambiguous at the urban scale,by viewing the variable as an imbalance in capacities and exposure that generates spatially unsafe conditions.This refined conceptualization of spatial vulnerability becomes a lens for a more granular approach to urban disaster risk reduction and city planning by identifying and integrating sociospatial considerations.

A Dilemma of Language: “Natural Disasters” in Academic Literature

For decades sections of the academic community have been emphasizing that disasters are not natural.Nevertheless, politicians, the media, various international organizations—and, more surprisingly, many established researchers working in disaster studies—are still widely using the expression 'natural disaster.' We systematically analyzed the usage of the expression 'natural disaster' by disaster studies researchers in 589 articles in six key academic journals representative of disaster studies research,and found that authors are using the expression in three principal ways:(1) delineating natural and human-induced hazards;(2) using the expression to leverage popularity;and(3) critiquing the expression 'natural disaster.' We also identified vulnerability themes that illustrate the context of 'natural disaster' usage. The implications of continuing to use this expression, while explicitly researching human vulnerability, are wide-ranging, and we explore what this means for us and our peers. This study particularly aims to stimulate debate within the disaster studies research community and related fields as to whether the term 'natural disaster' is really fit for purpose moving forward.

Measuring Resilience in the Assumed City

The malleable nature of both the idea of a city and the idea of resilience raises an important question—why measure?Resilience is assumed to be located in the physical infrastructure of specific places or as a quality of the people located there.For disasters,we are often trying to conceptualize,measure,or render legible resilience in physical structures.But what is it that we are trying to measure,and is the idea of a city reflected in these measurements?If cities are organized around something other than resilience,is resilience their natural by-product?What is necessitating the need for increased—and measured—resilience?Using interpretive policy analysis,we explored five well known disaster resilience frameworks(UNDRR's Making Cities Resilient Campaign,UN-Habitat's City Resilience Profiling Programme,The World Bank and GFDRR's Resilient Cities Program,Arup and The Rockefeller Foundation's City Resilience Index,and The Rockefeller Foundation's 100 Resilient Cities)to identify the working definition of‘‘city''and of‘‘resilience.''We conclude that if the demand for cities to become more resilient is an acknowledgment of the risk produced by globalized urbanization,then the call itself is an indictment of the current state of our cities.

What We Measure Matters:The Case of the Missing Development Data in Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction Monitoring

The Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction 2015−2030’s(SFDRR)framing moved away from disaster risk as a natural phenomenon to the examination of the inequality and injustice at the root of human vulnerability to hazards and disasters.Yet,its achievements have not seriously challenged the long-established capitalist systems of oppression that hinder the development leading to disaster risk creation.This article is an exploratory mapping exercise of and a collective reflection on Sustainable Development Goals(SDGs)and SFDRR indicators-and their use in measuring progress towards disaster risk reduction(DRR).We highlight that despite the rhetoric of vulnerability,the measurement of progress towards DRR remains event/hazard-centric.We argue that the measurement of disaster risk could be greatly enhanced by the integration of development data in future iterations of global DRR frameworks for action.