Disaster Risk Reduction within Complex Urban Systems. The importance and challenges of holistic approaches.

In the dynamic realm of urban systems, it is well known that natural disasters impose great challenges that hinder the sustainable development of such systems. The initial approaches towards cities and their sustainable development had the tendency of a fragmentary analysis. Thus, urban elements of different scales were seen separately without carefully considering the interdepend- ency. Modern approaches tend to analyze such systems as a whole, complex unit in which every constituting element in different scales is analysed in relationship to other elements as part of a greater system. Nevertheless, disasters seem to be on rise worldwide (Gaillard and Mercer, 2012) reflecting an inability to properly adapt to such hindering hazardous events. The aim of this paper is precisely to reflect on the importance of holistic approaches and the challenges such approaches impose from knowledge and implementation point of view taking into account the multiscale dynamics of cities. Through an analysis of the current state-of-the-art, the paper tries to give an overview on “knowledge” and “implementation” point of view in terms of Disaster Risk Reduc- tion(DRR) and the complexity within Urban Systems.

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