Making Cities Resilient – Haitians cities assess their resilience to disasters in 'Disaster Resilience Scorecard' workshop by GOAL and UNDRR

By: Marie Anne Lespinasse and Isabelle Bremaud, GOAL

PORT-AU- PRINCE, Haiti, 31st March 2020 – Three Haitians cities participated in a workshop offered in 2019  by Goal Haiti and UNDRR's regional office for the Americas and the Caribbean. It was an opportunity to assess their resilience to disasters, convey different stakeholders and promote a dialogue on the relevance of preparedness and resilient thinking at local level.

Jeremie in the southwest, Ouanaminthe in the northeast and Tabarre in the west of the country were actively engaged in the deployment of the Disaster Resilience Scorecard, a tool part of the Making Cities Resilient Campaign, led by UNDRR to support local governments in the implementation of Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction at local level.

The scorecard is structured around the 'Ten Essentials for Making Cities Resilient Campaign' and provides a set of questions that cover areas such as policy development, urban planning, societal engagement, infrastructure preparedness, and environmental aspects of disaster resilience.

The total scorecard responses scale ranges from 0 - 141 (with 0 being the lowest resilience score possible, and 141 the highest). The analysis of the overall assessments showed a great variation, and disparity with no clear trend emerging among all three. However, results recorded for 'essential' no 9' – 'Ensure Effective Disaster Response', showed that two of the cities, Ouanaminthe and Tabarre, recorded their highest score.

These preliminary assessments showed that despite several disaster risk reduction efforts made by local authorities, and their partners over a number of years, there is still a road ahead to increase the urban resilience of these cities.

These workshops were part of GOAL's 'Scale-up of the Technical Assistance on Resilience' programme, funded by USAID/OFDA (2018-19), and of the Making Cities Resilient Campaign activities in the Americas region supported by USAID/OFDA and ECHO.

Related links:
http://resiliencenexus.org/resources/reports/
https://www.goalglobal.org/
https://www.unisdr.org/campaign/resilientcities/toolkit/article/disaster-resilience-scorecard-for-cities
https://americas/index-eng.html
https://www.unisdr.org/campaign/resilientcities

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