Building a resilient city requires detail and careful assessment of its current level of vulnerabilities and resilience. During such assessment and initiatives it should remember that there are large differences in risk and vulnerability within urban areas ( Satterthwaite, Dodman, & Bicknell,...

In this chapter the objective is to link the causes (risks) with the need of disaster resilient entities (urban areas) in an era in which the climate is changing and natural hazards are likely to occur more frequently and more severely ( Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), 2007 )....

One of the emerging reasons for the current trend of increasing impacts of disasters is the unpredictability of natural hazard events coupled with the tendency of human settlements to move to vulnerable locations including coastal areas in search of economic gains. Urban areas are most affected...

Urban areas are particularly vulnerable to climate impacts. Extreme weather events have long been causes of disasters independent of climate change, leading to destruction of infrastructure, loss of lives, and loss of assets. However, the changes and increases in impacts brought about by climate...

The notion of social capital refers to social connections between people, such as networking, trust, norms, etc. Rich and good-condition social capital is supposed to enhance collective action in a society. This is why social capital has attracted more attention in the field of development...

During the period of 2000–2009, a record 402 climate-related disasters occurred in the Southeast Asia region, and the number of geophysical disasters was 61 according to the International Disaster Database by Center for Research on the Epidemiology (CRED). The number of climate-related...

In recent years, several studies have focused on city clusters like megacities and mega urban areas, as they concentrate a significant part of the world's human population and critical economic assets in potentially hazardous locations ( Yusuf, 2007 ; WWF, 2009 ; Kraas, 2007 ; Jones, 2009 )....