Tomorrow’s Cities risk agreement approach: utilising the analytical, communication and convening power of science for inclusive, risk-sensitive urban planning

Global disaster risk reduction in urban development frameworks calls for people-centred, participatory, and integrated approaches to addressing urban risk and building resilience. This paper presents a methodology that engages communities at risk and policy actors to assess scientifically projected impacts of multiple hazards on locally defined future urban scenarios and co-develop measures to reduce future hazard impacts. The methodology enables stakeholders to identify barriers and strategies to support more people-centred, participatory, and risk-sensitive future urban development. Within a workshop, selected community groups are first introduced to an interactive dashboard that simplifies the communication of projected multi-hazard impacts (e.g., human displacement, casualties, loss of education capacity). Community groups identify and discuss the effects of different hazards, exposure, and vulnerability features along with projected impacts on community-led future urban scenarios. Such evidence-based and participatory discussions lead to a set of revisions of the urban scenarios. Finally, the groups discuss existing community, urban planning, and local decision-making challenges that could hinder the implementation of the urban scenarios. The proposed methodology is presented within the framework of the Tomorrow's Cities Decision Support Environment (TCDSE) and illustrated through a deployment in Rapti, Nepal. Findings confirm the ability of the approach to facilitate a shared understanding of context-specific risk amongst diverse local and policy actors. The combination of scientific and local information improves awareness and gives agency to marginalised groups for improved communication with urban planners in disaster risk reduction decision-making.