TRANSCEND. Transforming urban development to reduce the impact of natural disasters

The problem

Climate change means that flooding, earthquakes, landslides and droughts are increasing across the world. Current urban development practice doesn’t take these risks into account, leaving vulnerable communities exposed to the consequences of these natural disasters.

Transforming current urban development and disaster management practices will empower these communities, allowing them to have a fuller understanding of the impact of proposed developments on their people, economy and environment.

Achieving this transformation requires new partnerships and ways of working to be created. These will allow government agencies and communities to work together to analyse, forecast, visualize and debate disaster risk and to ensure sustainability and equitable resilience are built into development plans.

Our solution

Our Transcend research project is taking a proactive approach to this problem by setting up three Living Labs as experimental and learning environments in Sri Lanka, Pakistan and Malaysia.

Working collaboratively with a range of academic experts, government organisations, NGOs and marginalized communities, the three-year project seeks to transform current urban planning practices by developing an advanced digital platform that allows all stakeholders to take part in risk-sensitive urban planning.

Based on THINKlab’s digital expertise and the disaster risk reduction expertise within the Centre for Disaster Resilience at the University of Salford, the project seeks to allow evidence-based decision making that exploits the power of data, modelling, and urban simulation and visualization.

Project value

c. £1million