Clasificación de la evaluación de inversiones

“Resilience is the ability of a system to survive and thrive in the face of a complex, uncertain and ever-changing future. It is a way of thinking about both short term cycles and long term trends: minimizing disruptions in the face of shocks and stresses, recovering rapidly when they do occur, and adapting steadily to become better able to thrive as conditions continue to change. A resilience approach offers a proactive and holistic response to risk management and a way for cities to maintain competitiveness in the global forum.”

(Siemans, 2013b) This quote, taken from Siemans’ “Toolkit for Resilient Cities”, concisely outlines the significance of resilience to the urban context, importantly noting the importance of long-term thinking and change, but also highlights, with its mention of ‘cities’ and ‘competitiveness’, the pervasive dominance of financial and entrepreneurial concerns within the urban governance medium. Moreover, this toolkit could be considered an attempt to bridge the ‘implementation gap’ between theory and practice, which this chapter has highlighted around resilience and urban resilience. Accordingly, it is the purpose of this section to explore some practical principles of implementing urban resilience, in the style of Walker and Salt’s ‘Resilience Thinking’ and utilising urban design and governance considerations.

Earlier sections have highlighted how the burgeoning work on urban resilience in both academic, policy and practice arenas, have identified a number of key ‘pillars’ which are brought together by a range of stakeholders, at multiple scales, to pursue resiliency objectives within urban policy and practice. These pillars also display congruences between resilience and the key findings of earlier chapters on urban design and urban governance. These ‘pillars’ are:

 Risk Management,

 Integrated Governance and Collaboration, and

 Holistic Urban Design. Risk Management

“Risk analysis and assessments are essential prerequisites for informed decision making, prioritizing projects, planning for risk reduction measures and identifying high-, medium- or low-risk areas, according to their

vulnerability and the cost effectiveness of potential interventions.”

(UNISDR, 2012) As noted in the previous section, the UNISDR (2012) recommend that an assessment of the local risk context provides the foundation for implementing resilience strategies, and in effect, where resilience measures should be directed; to this end, they advocate a simple model for calculating risk55, constructed from understandings

55_{Risk is defined as: “The probability and potential impact of a hazardous event occurring, calculated}

of hazard56, vulnerability57, exposure58and potential resilience measures.; see Figure 4.8 (in this example disaster risk).

Figure 4.8 – Formula for Risk

(Source: UNISDR, 2012, p.7) This is highly appropriate given that the built environment presents many inherent vulnerabilities, but logically also opportunities for mitigating wider hazards and their potential impact upon everyday life. However, a review of available risk assessment information undertaken for the DESURBS project (Coaffee et al., 2012), indicated that there was a lack of standard methodologies, compounded by a dichotomy between complex quantitative approaches and oversimplified qualitative methodologies.

At a National level, the UK Government produces both a National Risk Assessment, which is confidential and restricted to key stakeholders such as the police, and a National Risk Register, which is available to all. In effect, these documents identify potential threats and vulnerabilities for consideration at a more local level and are used by LRF’s to draw up a ‘Community Risk Register’, which is intended to inform

56_{Hazard is defined as: “A potential occurrence, which a given space is exposed to and could}

potentially be damaging to users or site operations.”(Coaffee et al., 2012, p.6)

57_{Vulnerability is defined as: “The degree to which a development is particularly susceptible to a given}

hazard, as a result of site and design vulnerabilities.”(Coaffee et al., 2012, p.6)

58_{Exposure is defined as:“People, property, systems, or other elements present in hazard zones that}

businesses and communities of potential threats and hazards. However, within the built environment sector, Bosher et al. (2008) suggest that there is inadequate consideration of these potential threats and hazards, with risk assessment only intermittently applied and with varying effectiveness59. Others have suggested that whilst understandings of risk are increasingly informing financial development practices, for architects and designers the priority remains smooth ‘delivery’, reputation and responding to the clients wishes (Imrie and Street, 2009; Jacobs, 2014). At a project scale, designers of the built environment are expected to carry out risk assessments under the 2007 UK Construction (Design and Management) Regulations (CDM) Act60_{, these assessments are primarily aimed at construction} related risks and there is no associated methodology.

More generic guidance does exist, notably from the British Standards Institution (BSI), which provides some simple principles for risk reduction; see Figure 4.10, below. However, this still seems quite esoteric and not particularly well tailored to the built environment, e.g. what is the difference between ‘risk analysis’ and ‘risk evaluation’? Accordingly, Table 4.3 shows a simple stage by stage guide to risk management, adapted from Bosher (2014) and the BSI. It is proposed that together, these two concepts can form the basis of a simple, qualitative risk assessment and management framework for built environment stakeholders.

59_{There are many risk management tools developed specifically for counter-terrorism issues, but}

notablely they are nearly always undertaken by risk specific professionals, such as specially trained police officers. Whilst a variety of guidance is available to assist built environment stakeholders, such as RIBA (Royal Institute of British Architects) guidance on eliminating vulnerabilities, training events and NaCTSO also have an online self-assessment tool for end-users to establish potential vulnerability (VSAT), it is unclear how readily this is utilised.

60_{In April 2015, a new CDM act came into effect (CDM 2015), although responsibilities for designers}

Figure 4.9 – British Standards Risk Management Model

Table 4.3 – Risk Management Stages