The Disaster Resilience Scorecard for Cities – Action Guide. Chapter 1: Overview of the survey results

The Guide is a result of contributions from the ARISE-US Network in collaboration with the United Nations Office for Disaster Risk Reduction (UNDRR) and the Making Cities Resilient 2030 initiative.

The UNDRR Disaster Resilience Scorecard for Cities has proven to be a very helpful tool in assessing all the ‘systems of systems’ aspects of disaster resilience and creating a holistic ‘baseline’ of city’s strengths and weaknesses. While the scorecard is a robust tool in helping cities identify gaps and potential areas of improvement, it is perhaps less effective at helping cities prioritize and translate that assessment work into an implementable course of actions.  Based on results from a survey and feedback from local governments and stakeholders, this Action Guide aims to provide ‘how-to’ steps to support local governments in developing and implementing an action plan to address gaps and opportunities identified in their resilience strategies, based on assessment results from the use of the UNDRR Disaster Resilience Scorecard for Cities.  

The Action Guide has a number of chapters:

• Chapter 1 – Overview of the survey results (this chapter)
• Chapter 2 – How to create a prioritized action plan and prepare projects
• Chapter 3 – How to engage with the community
• Chapter 4 – How to finance projects derived from the action plan
• Annex – Compendium of Standards that are applicable for cities

This chapter provides a summary of background information gathered from key stakeholders to inform the development of this Action Guide, and in support of improved awareness and understanding of disaster risk reduction (DRR) efforts in practice.