Smart and Resilient Cities: Best Practices from Disaster Risk Management Strategies

The chapter investigates, through document analysis, the themes of urban smartness and disaster risk management in the conceptual perspective of resilience, exploring some best practices at the urban level in those countries that are most exposed to the occurrence of natural disasters. For this purpose, a country risk profile was preliminarily determined, drawing information from the Inform Risk Index. After the identification of countries with the highest score in terms of exposure to natural hazards, the analysis was conducted at the “urban” level, with the aim to verify the presence of a city resilience strategy that takes into account disaster risk management issues. The analysis was conducted on cities that adopted both a disaster risk management plan and a city resilience strategy developed under the 100RC Framework. The results show a focus of resilience city strategies on the aspect of disaster preparedness, while there is a lower propensity, in some observed cases, for the full integration of smart city drivers in dealing with disasters, and, more generally, in defining a comprehensive approach to urban resilience.