Smart and Sustainable Communities: Leveraging Science, Technology and Innovation as a Strategy for Building Disaster and Climate Resilience

The session explores the application of science, technology and innovation (STI) for DRR to the idea of developing smart and sustainable communities as a strategy for building disaster and climate resilience. It is rooted in SDG 11, sustainable cities and communities, as well as in SFDRR Priority 2: Strengthening disaster risk governance to manage disaster risk.

In the session, our main question is how does leveraging technology and data-driven solutions for the purpose of enhancing the efficiency, sustainability, and quality of life of communities possibly lead to improvement in disaster and climate resilience of all?

To answer the main question, we examine how the urban and rural divide (in our countries) became prominent and changed the disaster risk profile on each side of the divide. Are there particular risks localized on each side? Do smart STIs have the ability to bring about changes that narrow the resilience gap between the divide?

Our panelists bring their country perspective and experiences going through these questions:  Are there smart strategies that they successfully applied across the resilience divide? Conversely, are there incremental smart strategies they applied to put the communities on either side of the divide on an even keel? By what measures do they gauge how near or far a community is from its smart goals? Can these measures be used as proxies for disaster and climate resilience? What are the most significant barriers to implementing inclusive smart and sustainable solutions to reduce the urban and rural resilience divide?