Policy Interventions for Resilience and Adaptive Cities

Policy interventions for resilience and adaptation at the local government level is challenging for many reasons, like national policy making scheme in most cases, lack of resources, changes in risk landscape, etc. One of the key issues in recent years is the emergence of new risks such as global pandemic, digital divide and digital power concentration, energy crisis, food prices, etc. These makes deeper impacts on the existing risk landscape where disasters, extreme events, climate inactions, biodiversity losses are prominent risks in terms of likelihoods and impacts. There are different tools available for measuring resilience in the urban areas, one of them is the CDRI (Climate Disaster Resilience Index), which consists of physical, social, economic, institutional, and natural dimensions of resilience. In an increasingly complex urban area, systemic risk approach becomes more pertinent to understand the interlinkages of different systems related to urban resilience. Ten specific policy measures are suggested in this chapter: (1) Implementing RCES: resource utilization and ensuring urban rural connectivity, (2) Conducting risk assessment in terms of systemic risks, (3) Developing citizen governance interface: utilizing citizen science, (4) Supporting open data and open governance, (5) Enhancing science based adaptive governance, (6) Promoting Local Production and Consumption, (7) Using HEDRM as a common tool to enhance healthy city, (8) Enhancing 1.5 deg. lifestyle, (9) Implementing Digital Den-en-Toshi and ensuring digital human resource, and (10) Utilizing Disruptive technologies and Society 5.0. To implement these policies, specific entry points and change agents needs to be identified.