Urban Disasters: Case Studies from South East Asia

This report details the kinds of global environmental change disasters that have affected Southeast Asia over the past five to ten years and the practice of predicting and responding to such disasters. It seeks to understand who the various actors are (pre- and post-disaster) and some of the social, economic, and political factors affecting the region’s capacity to predict and respond effectively.

For the purposes of the Urban Climate Resilience Southeast Asia Partnership (UCRSEA), this report focuses on climatological and hydro-meteorological hazards such as typhoons, cyclones, and droughts. Moreover, while biological and geophysical hazards have had a massive impact on Asia and the Pacific, climate-related disasters have caused the most widespread damage. Geological events such as earthquakes or volcanic eruptions, though not influenced by human activity, their consequences may have tremendous adverse effects on human populations. For instance, earthquake-borne tsunamis cause extensive flooding in low-lying regions. In that sense, what was originally a geological hazard has hydro-meteorological implications.