Sound Practices of Disaster Risk Reduction at Local Level

Disaster risk reduction (DRR) is an important component for achieving sustainable development of cities, in particular when the world is steadily becoming more urbananised. Fast growing cities and urban areas of the world increase disaster risk due to economic growth and fast population expansion. With local governments increasingly taking an important role in the sustainable development, the need for globally comparable knowledge of disasters risks has even become greater. Sound practices that have been tested and implemented by different cities around the world aid knowledge sharing opportunities for future disaster risk reduction. Accordingly, this paper focuses on reported sound practices of local DRR and aims to provide a collection of sound practices on DRR actions at the local level and what needs to be done to reduce future disaster risks. Paper uses the ten essentials identified by the United Nations International Strategy for Disaster Reduction (UNISDR) in 2010 to illustrate some of the risk reduction work that has been undertaken across the world. The intent is to provide local governments and other institutions learn from one another by effectively facilitating the sharing of sound practices and disseminating these established sound practices in risk reduction.