Cities draw up plans to mitigate risks

A number of megacities in China have come up with their own plans over the past year to strengthen their infrastructures and brace themselves against major risks.

In November, Shanghai approved a guideline to speed up its resilience-building efforts.

According to the draft document the city's emergency management bureau released to seek public opinion, the city will enhance the ability of transport infrastructures, public utilities, chemical factory zones, schools, hospitals, residential buildings and large complexes to resist disasters.

It will launch a project to restore coastlines and islands, advance the development of coastal shelterbelts and buffer zones for regions facing a higher risk of storm surges, and further consolidate sea and river dikes.

The city also encouraged financial institutions and private companies to invest in constructing and operating infrastructures that are used not only on a daily basis but also needed for emergency response.

It called for more shelter space to help residents get through emergencies, asking city authorities to sort out information about facilities that can be used as shelters, including squares, parks, schools and sports venues.

Shanghai should better utilize advanced technologies, the document said, setting a goal for the city to develop a "digital brain" providing safety and resilience data.

In a similar plan issued in March, Beijing emphasized the need to establish a system where the country's capital and neighboring Tianjin and Hebei province collaborate in responses to disasters, including earthquakes and floods.

The three regions should strengthen information sharing, joint consultations and mutual support, and establish a system to share their logistics capacity during emergencies, the document said.

The plan divided the area of Beijing into more than 30"groups", which it said should become able to sustain themselves, as well as their residents' basic well-being, through disasters.

The groups are expected to be able to support each other's operations in the face of emergencies.

Subdistricts and townships within the groups should boost their ability to manage risks, while residential communities and villages should form "a defense line at the grassroots that is adaptive, self-organizing and self-coordinating", the plan said.

In another development, improved resilience has also become an emphasis in territory spatial plans submitted by many cities and approved by the State Council over the past year.

For example, Guangzhou in Guangdong province said in its spatial plan that it will work to better respond to different kinds of disasters and further reduce risks by strengthening the management of large transport hubs, high-rise buildings, large commercial complexes and urban villages.

Nanjing in Jiangsu province said in its plan that it will build a modernized system of spaces for evacuation and rescue. It also said it aims to significantly improve its ability to resist, adapt to and recover from major disasters.

Wang Naiyu, director of the REN Center for Urban Resilience at Zhejiang University, suggested cities establish a cross-department leading group and a multidisciplinary expert team in improving resilience.

The leading group, after thorough research and consulting with experts, should make specific goals for responding to different kinds of disasters, Wang said.

Wang also called for fully assessing infrastructures in a city to understand the possible impact of disasters, find out the gap between the resilience goals and the reality, and take targeted measures to narrow and eliminate the difference.