Nairobi, 15 Nov 12
Submissions should be in PDF format and limited to not more than 1000 words. They may carry photos, or other graphics.

1. Please provide a narrative of no more than 500 words describing your city; its location, size, population, exposure to natural and human-made hazards.
2. Please provide a narrative of no more than 500 words outlining why your city should be selected to pilot the City Resilience Profiling systems. (see criteria in CRPP Outline)
3. Candidate cities will be expected to submit a Statement of Commitment to the four-year CRPP programme as a first step in engagement with UN-Habitat and partners.
4. Please send to: dmp@unhabitat.org. The deadline is extended until COB Friday, January 20, 2013.

Competition for partner cities in the UN-Habitat City Resilience Profiling Programme.

There is a growing network of organizations, agencies, and governments that understand the critical importance of reducing risk to populations in areas vulnerable to recognizable threats. While the global discourse on climate change has been successful in developing risk reduction through adaptation methodologies, and has driven much of this dialogue, climate change adaption planning often does not consider other types of hazards, including the largest killers (earthquakes and tsunamis) as well as, fires, industrial or technological disasters, and social and political crises that impact human settlements around the globe.

Urban planning, spatial and strategic development programmes, international aid organization programmes, international finance and private sector organizations currently focus the majority of their strategies on the basis of analyzing specific risks and investing in mitigation or reduction projects. While reasonably effective for specific threats, this approach is largely based on defining risk and applying remedial reduction measures. There is no means to test the efficacy of these efforts until another disaster occurs that meets or exceeds the original mitigation design limits.

While advances are being made in shifting emphasis from risk reduction to resilience, no means of measuring urban resilience has been developed to date leaving city and town administrations understanding only what their inherent vulnerabilities may be. The most developed tool for building resilience is the United Nation Office for Disaster Risk Reduction (UNISDR) ten-point checklist associated with the global Making Cities Resilient Campaign. This framework of principles; applied using the Local Government Self Assessment Tool developed by UNISDR and partners, has opened and led efforts by over 1200 cities to date seeking to make their cities safer and more resistant to natural disasters. Building on this, and expanding the threat/hazard envelope to include economic, social and human-driven hazards, UN-Habitat will focus on establishing clear standards that planners, engineers, architects, economists, and other professionals who manage cities can target and use to ensure cities actually do become measurably more resilient and that progress can be compared.

UN-Habitat’s City Resilience Profiling Programme (CRPP) is developing a comprehensive and integrated urban planning and management approach founded on the principles of ‘resilience’ that dynamically underpin and improve capacity to protect urban citizens and their assets. ‘Urban Resilience’ refers to the ability of any urban system,to withstand and recover quickly from ‘critical events.’ The CRPP will provide forward-looking, multi-sectoral, multi-hazard, multi-stakeholder approach integrating all functional aspects of human settlements to planning and developing urban settlements through a four year research and development initiative. The participation of a select number of cities in the programme is essential for developing practical, tested tools, and systems for all urban stakeholders interested in the goal of making their cities resilient.

Through CRPP, partner cities will benefit from 1) improving understanding of what resilience means, how to measure and where respective cities stand with regards to their resilience targets, 2) galvanizing technical, political and financial support on where to make changes, improvements and investments to build resilience to natural disasters and other crises, and strengthen urban systems and their sustainability, 3) operational menu of global and country specific tools and expertise in addressing urban resilience, and 4) strengthening multi stakeholder coordination (urban managers, planners, architects, politicians, community members, private sector, and others).

The Competition

The purpose of this competition is to select partner cities interested in engaging with UN-Habitat and other partners in an ambitious but critical programme developing a methodology for establishing new planning tools and framework integrating resilience targets within a sustainable urban development agenda. Pilot cities will be selected to ensure a good balance between developed and developing countries and regions to demonstrate global applicability of City Resilience Profiling.

UN-Habitat invites local government representatives already engaged in the UNISDR Making Cities Resilient Campaign, to express interest and commitment to a four year programme to develop the City Resilience Profiles. The deadline of the competition is extended until Friday, January 20, 2013 and shortlisted candidate city representatives contacted the following week.

Selection criteria

The objective of this competition is to select a representative group of city partners to join the CRPP. This small cadre will provide a laboratory for developing testing tools for measuring resilience, producing resilience profiles, and setting new standards for developing strategic planning for urban development programmes. The criteria used to select partner cities include:

1. Willingness to participate: The CRPP is a four year programme. It will develop an integrated urban systems model, quantification and measurement systems, analysis and indexing systems, software for city planners and managers, and a set of resilience-based standards and guidelines. To ensure practical and useful outcomes, partner cities will be involved from the early stages through the research and development, testing and profiling, and eventual advocacy and policy making processes. Demonstration partner cities should have high willingness at both political and managerial levels to participate in CRP development and invest time and resources in this endeavor.
· Indicators: City Mayor and senior staff endorses expression of interest; ISDR Campaign member; DRR policies/budget in place; Focal points (departments and staff) identified and committed;

2. Availability of data: Making Cities Resilient Campaign cities have already made commitments to implementing UNISDR’s ‘Ten Essentials’. Some baseline information will have already been gathered, and represent a useful baseline for further developing a measurement and profiling model. Pilot cities should have reasonable quantity and quality of data; or interest to invest time and resources in developing data collection models to allow testing of the CRPP’s urban systems framework and the software to be developed under the programme.
   · Indicators: Hazard/risk assessments; climate change adaptation assessments; vulnerability assessment; capacity assessment; output from UNISDR’s Local Government Self-Assessment Tool, PD/PCNA’s, Maplecroft reports.
3. Promotional impact: To ensure replicability of the City Resilience Profile tools, partner cities will also demonstrate a commitment to sharing information, producing promotional materials, and participating in regional and global events showcasing the City Resilience Profiling. Cities attracting international attention either as a result of exposure to multi-hazard events, or due to their efforts to reduce disaster impacts are preferred as partner cities.
   · Indicators: Large-scale disaster events database; major reconstruction programmes complete or underway; ISDR Champion cities; UN-Habitat World Urban Campaign partner cities; previous engagement in the UNISDR Global Platform, membership in one or more city networks (UCLG, Metropolis, etc.), UN-Habitat partner cities engaged in technical cooperation programming.
4. Network linkages: Not all cities have resources and capacity to implement robust resilience-based urban development programmes. There are however, many examples of cities working together through south-south, north-south and triangular cooperation initiatives. These partnerships make good use of expertise, experience, and resources to assist and support a range of activities of common interest to all cities. Cities already inter-linked through city-to-city dialogue or partnerships, and with a commitment to expanding their engagement with the City Resilience Profiling Programme will be preferred;
   · Indicators: City-to-city agreements in place; membership in one or more city networks (UCLG, Metropolis, etc.); ongoing joint programming underway.

Resources

UN-Habitat, working together with partners is seeking funding to support the engagement of city partners for the CRPP. These funds will be used for ensuring participation of partner cities both at Steering Committee and Reference Group levels, as well as in the local authority representing the partner city. Funding will be sought for regular bi-annual meetings, participation in the global forums including the UNISDR Global Platform, UN-Habitat's World Urban Forum, and elsewhere as opportunities arise. Additionally, some funding will be sought to assist partner cities in developing nations through technical cooperation support throughout the duration of the CRPP. A resource commitment however will be required by all partner cities to ensure both human and financial obligations are met.

Note: The decision on which cities are selected for the pilot programme will be considered final and no discussions will be entered into as to why others may not have been shortlisted.