Smart Urban Resilience: Enabling Citizen Action in Disaster Risk Reduction and Emergency Response

墨西哥的自然灾害是造成人类苦难和经济损失的一个重要原因。地震、飓风和洪水等灾害估计每年平均造成29亿美元的损失，因此，确定新型、综合和共享的减少灾害风险和应急响应形式是国家的优先事项。这种需求对于中等城市来说尤其突出，这些城市是世界上大多数城市人口的家园，但对它们的了解却很少。先前的研究已经确定，鉴于墨西哥城市的地貌和水文气象条件的广泛多样性以及当前不断变化的气候，它们可能会经历更频繁和极端的天气事件。在8770万生活在各种自然灾害地区的墨西哥人中，70%生活在城市，10%生活在城郊地区。为直接应对这些挑战，本项目侧重于智能/数字城市主义实践、减少灾害风险（DRR）和应急响应之间的交集，以确定智慧城市（及相关技术）如何在规划和应对灾害和紧急情况时启用（或禁用）公民行动。它借鉴了《新城市议程》（联合国人居署2017年）和《城市可持续发展目标》（联合国2015年）确立的目标，包括在城市建设中采用和实施减少灾害风险做法和促进参与性方法的必要性，从而研究了数字技术促进墨西哥城市复原力的可能性。弹性研究和文献表明，建立弹性不仅需要有效和高效的硬基础设施和技术进步，还需要有能力和功能的“软基础设施”，包括社会网络和机构能力和协调（Susskind 2010）。我们的项目通过研究智慧城市在减少灾害风险和应急响应方面的途径，承认、寻求利用并寻找途径加强民间社会在墨西哥减少灾害风险和应急响应方面历来发挥的重要作用。虽然智慧城市叙事和数字城市技术无疑对当代城市结构产生了深远的影响，但它们在改变城市灾害风险和突发事件治理方面的潜力在很大程度上仍未得到探索。该项目的主要目的是了解智慧城市和城市数字技术如何通过改变公民准备和应对自然灾害和紧急情况的方式，在建设城市韧性方面发挥作用，从而通过经验检验公民参与对于在减灾中实现智慧城市技术的潜力是否以及如何重要。该项目着眼于一系列智能城市干预措施（如开放数据平台、公民黑客、智能城市规划等）的现有做法和未来潜力，这些干预措施改变了不同社会行为体在减少灾害风险和应急响应中的作用。从地理上看，该项目侧重于中型城市，因为这些地区由于快速和无计划的增长、城市蔓延和贫困，未来风险可能加剧。在全球范围内，大多数城市居民居住在中小城市，但研究主要集中在大城市和特大城市。中等城市在治理、资源和能力方面面临挑战，这些挑战直接影响到它们参与减少灾害风险和应急响应的方式。考虑到克雷塔罗、普埃布拉和阿卡普尔科这三个城市所代表的灾害和生态系统的多样性，该项目选择了这三个城市作为案例研究的主要地点。

Natural hazards in Mexico are a significant source of human suffering and economic loss. With earthquakes, hurricanes and floods, amongst others, generating estimated annual average losses of $2.9b USD, identifying novel, integrated and shared forms of disaster risk reduction (DRR) and emergency response is a national priority. Such need is particularly salient for medium-sized cities, which are home to the majority of the world's urban population yet poorly understood. Previous studies have identified that Mexican cities, given their broad diversity of geomorphological and hydro-meteorological conditions as well as the current changing climate, are likely to experience more frequent and extreme weather events. Out of the 87.7 million Mexicans living in areas exposed to various natural hazards, 70% live in urban and 10% in peri-urban areas. Responding directly to these challenges, this project focuses on the intersection between smart/digital urbanism practices, disaster risk reduction (DRR) and emergency response to determine how the smart city (and associated technologies) can enable (or disable) citizen action in planning for and responding to disasters and emergencies. It draws on the objectives established by the New Urban Agenda (UN Habitat 2017) and the 'Urban Sustainable Development Goal' (United Nations 2015), including the need to adopt and implement DRR practices and foster participatory approaches in the making of cities, thus examining the possibility of digital technologies contributing to urban resilience in Mexico. Resilience studies and literature have shown that building resilience requires not only hard effective and efficient infrastructure and technological advances, but also capable and functioning 'soft infrastructure' including social networks and institutional capacity and coordination (Susskind 2010). Our project recognizes, seeks to capitalize on, and find ways to strengthen the already significant role that civil society has historically played in DRR and emergency response in Mexico, through examining pathways for smart city approaches towards DRR and emergency response. While smart city narratives and digital urban technologies are undoubtedly having a profound impact on the contemporary configuration of the city, their potential for transforming the governance of DRR and emergencies in cities remains largely unexplored. This project's main aim is to understand how smart city and urban digital technologies play a role in building urban resilience through changing the ways in which citizens prepare and respond to natural disasters and emergencies, thereby empirically testing whether and how citizen engagement is important for realising the potential of smart urban technologies in DRR. The project looks at existing practice of and future potential for a range of smart city interventions (such as open data platforms, civic hacking, smart urban planning and others) altering the role of different social actors in DRR and emergency response. Geographically, the project focuses on medium-sized cities, given the potential of exacerbated future risks in these locations resulting from rapid and unplanned growth, urban sprawl and poverty. Globally, most urban residents live in small- or medium-sized cities, yet research concentrates on large- and mega-cities. Medium-sized cities bring their own challenges in governance, resource and capacity, and these challenges directly affect their ways of engaging with DRR and emergency response. The project has selected the cities of Queretaro, Puebla and Acapulco as the main locations for its case study, given the diversity of hazards and ecosystems represented within these 3 cities.