BrazilWorld Government Summit and Strategy& launch Urban Resilience Tool
The World Government Summit (WGS) has teamed up with Strategy& in the Middle East to develop the ‘Urban Resilience Tool’, a tool that helps city officials measure and compare how resilient their city is to economic, health, social, climate and urban shocks and developments.
The tool is part of the World Government Summit’s ambition to “support governments to enhance the resilience of their cities, increase their readiness to face challenges, and launch initiatives and programs that will support their recovery in vital sectors,” explained Mohamed Al Sharhan, Deputy Managing Director of the World Government Summit Organisation.
Launched in 2013, the World Government Summit is a think tank for governments in the region, and beyond. The platform supports leaders by among others facilitating knowledge transfer across communities and networks, organising conferences and roundtables, and conducting research together with the globe’s leading consulting and research houses.
Global strategy consulting firm Strategy& (formerly Booz & Company) is one such knowledge partner of the network, and was picked to develop an-depth business case for ‘urban resilience’ (to help governments plan and prioritise their investments) and the ‘Urban Resilience Tool’ (the provides governments with a baseline and benchmark).
“To develop resilience, decision makers must understand their city’s exposure to natural and human-caused threats,” explained Raed Kombargi, a partner with Strategy& and the leader of the firm’s Energy, Chemicals, and Utilities practice in the Middle East. To provide this understanding, the tool analyses “eight critical features of resilient cities” built-up from over 130 different performance indicators.
“MENA cities face several major hazards such as climate change, landslides, pollution and cybersecurity, and many others. They also face various vulnerabilities such as emergency care, social protection, and inclusion, and localisation of supply chains, among others,” explained Kombargi.
With the tool’s insights, city leaders can work towards “eliminating any structural vulnerabilities that might intensify the impact of a disaster in terms of basic, social, economic, and urban environment needs, through developing all required institutional capacities,” he added.
Check out the tool: The interactive Urban Resilience Tool can be accessed on this website.
The tool currently contains twenty cities, nine cities in the Middle East and North Africa (Abu Dhabi, Dubai, Amman, Kuwait City, Muscat, Riyadh, Jeddah, Casablanca, and Cairo) and eleven international cities for global benchmark purposes (Cape Town, Houston, London, Nairobi, Sao Paulo, Seoul, Singapore, Sydney, Tokyo, Toronto, and Zurich).
Al Sharhan concluded: “The tool will support governments to enhance the resilience of their cities, increase their readiness to face challenges, and launch initiatives and programs that will support their recovery in vital sectors.”
