Urban Africa Risk Knowledge (Urban ARK)

非洲城市：风险和能力（城市ARC）是一个为期三年的研究和能力建设方案，旨在通过打破风险积累的周期来减少撒哈拉以南非洲城市的灾害风险。该方案旨在通过建立一个包括撒哈拉以南非洲、非洲和国际研究人员和从业人员的实践社区来做到这一点，这些研究人员和从业人员可以对风险积累和减少动态进行结构化评估。这将需要详细了解非洲低收入国家各种城市环境中妇女、男子和儿童面临的风险，以及这些风险的性质和规模如何在城市增长和变化、贫穷和气候变化的背景下发生变化。该联合体将在以下地点开展工作：达喀尔（塞内加尔）、伊巴丹（尼日利亚）、卡隆加（马拉维）、蒙巴萨（肯尼亚）、内罗毕（肯尼亚）和尼亚美（尼日尔）。这些城市的区域覆盖面很广（西非三个，东非三个），城市人口规模不同，位于内陆和沿海地区。ARUP、联合国人居署、救助儿童会和国际警报组织也是联盟成员，提供接触从业者科学前沿的机会，并通过研究过程塑造这一点。Urban ARC的研究问题是：（1）在城市中心的整个灾害范围内，风险的性质、规模和分布是什么，它们之间的相互联系是什么？(2)在城市增长和变化、贫困和气候变化的背景下，推动风险积累的根本因素是什么？(3)在此背景下，地方治理以及城市规划和管理方面的哪些体制安排和良好做法能够减少风险和建设复原力？这些问题回应了我们对撒哈拉以南非洲城市灾害风险的了解：由于缺乏基线系统数据收集，脆弱性和损失报告不足，但随着城市人口和资产的增加以及当地环境变得更加危险，脆弱性和损失正在增加，而且风险和损失分布不均。在撒哈拉以南非洲大部分城市的动态和数据匮乏的背景下，重要的是要展示一系列潜在的方法，为监测风险开辟新的可能性，这些风险可以覆盖日常公共卫生，直到小型和罕见的灾难性事件。与此同时，该地区不同的决策文化使得揭示历史路径和决策点变得非常重要，这些路径和决策点决定了城市的形式和功能，地方和城市范围的能力，并最终产生了风险积累或减少的轨迹。城市区域合作中心的工作方案为应对这些挑战提供了一种结构化的方法：工作方案1开发了四种不同的脆弱性、能力和损失评估工具，并开展了更多的工作，重点关注城市中暴力和冲突与灾害风险之间的相互作用，以促进对适合撒哈拉以南非洲城市能力和需求的风险监测和评估工具进行批判性比较分析。WP2带来了物理科学及其建模技能，以研究多种灾害和气候变化对城市规划的影响，并与城市规划者合作，改善科学政策沟通。第三工作方案对城市治理采取了广泛的观点，重点关注城市发展和灾害风险管理的历史轨迹，以揭示在当代发展道路避免再现新风险之前需要讨论和考虑的根本原因。WP4将这种学习与行动研究议程结合在一起，与关键参与者合作，以更好地理解和帮助为当代决策和未来规划提供信息。未来规划是我们使命的核心，我们有两名专门的博士生，培训研讨会和访问学者，以及一个开放科学会议，以培养这个快速发展的政策领域的早期职业研究人员。

Urban Africa: Risk and Capacity (Urban ARC) is a three year programme of research and capacity building that aims to reduce disaster risk in urban sub-Saharan Africa by breaking cycles of risk accumulation. The programme aims to do this by building a community of practice including sub-Saharan, African and international researchers and practitioners that can provide a structured assessment of risk accumulation and reduction dynamics. This will require a detailed understanding of risk to women, men and children in a diverse range of urban contexts in low-income countries in Africa, and of how the nature and scale of these risks are changing in the context of urban growth and change, poverty and climate change. The consortium will work: Dakar (Senegal), Ibadan (Nigeria), Karonga (Malawi), Mombasa (Kenya), Nairobi (Kenya) and Niamey (Niger). The cities offer broad regional coverage (three in West Africa, three in East Africa), a range of city population sizes and in-land and coastal locations. ARUP, UN-HABITAT, Save the Children and International Alert are also consortium members providing access to the cutting edge of practitioner science and for this to be shaped through the research process. Urban ARC's research questions are: (1) What is the nature, scale and distribution of risk across the whole spectrum of hazards in urban centres, and what are their inter-linkages? (2) What are the underlying factors driving risk accumulation in the context of urban growth and change, poverty and climate change? (3) What institutional arrangements and good practices in local governance and in urban planning and management are capable of reducing risk and building resilience in this context? These questions respond to what we know about disaster risk in urban sub-Saharan Africa: that vulnerability and loss is under-reported because of a lack of baseline systematic data collection, but that it is growing as urban populations and assets increase and local environments become more hazardous, and that risk and loss is unevenly distributed. In the dynamic and data poor contexts of cities in much of sub-Saharan Africa it is important to demonstrate a range of potential methodologies to open new possibilities for monitoring risk that can cover everyday, public health through to small and rare, catastrophic events. At the same time the varied decision-making cultures in this region make it important to uncover the historical pathways and decision-points that have determined city form and function, local and city wide capacity and ultimately generated trajectories for risk accumulation or reduction. Urban ARCs work programmes (WP) provide a structured way through these challenges: WP1 develops four distinct vulnerability, capacity and loss assessment tools with additional work focusing on interactions between violence and conflict with disaster risk in the city to stimulate critical comparative analysis of risk monitoring and assessment tools that are appropriate for the capacities and needs of urban sub-Saharan Africa. WP2 brings physical science and its modelling skills to examine multi-hazard and climate change impacts on urban planning, and to work with urban planners to improve science policy communication. WP3 takes a broad view of urban governance, focusing on historical trajectories in urban development and disaster risk management to uncover underlying root causes that need to be discussed and considered before contemporary development paths can avoid reproducing new risk. WP4 brings this learning together with an action research agenda to work with key actors to better understand and help inform contemporary decision-making and planning for the future. Future planning is core to our mission with two dedicated PhD students, training workshops and visiting fellows as well as an Open Science conference to foster early career researchers in this rapidly growing policy area.