Major Asian cities are located, by and large, across flood plains or in coastal areas. Over 50% of the urban populations are living in small and medium size cities with less than 500,000 populations that are growing faster and may not be able to cope with emerging urban issues. Considering the increased urban risks many of our cities are facing, it is clear that there is a need to integrate disaster risk reduction into the urban planning and local planning practices. The Chairs summary of the GPDRR 2009 calls for specific targets to achieve critical infrastructure safety, as stated: “By 2011 a global structural evaluation of all schools and hospitals should be undertaken and that by 2015 concrete action plans for safer schools and hospitals should be developed and implemented in all disaster prone countries. To respond to such a situation, UN-Habitat Bangkok Office in partnership with UNISDR Asia Pacific Secretariat decided to develop Toolkits which will facilitate the assessment of the safety of critical infrastructure, focusing on schools and hospitals in South Asia.
The obvious question in the beginning was why one needs another toolkit when there is a large body of available technical literature on disaster safe school and hospitals. Detailed examination of the existing literature and interviewing people directly involved with the supply and maintenance revealed that disaster safety of hospitals and schools from the owners’ and users’ perspective is inadequately covered. This is an important area since disaster safety is not just a technical issue; it needs proactive participation of both the owners and end-users in the endeavor of safe schools and hospital.
Under such circumstance, this project viewed the top level management and the end-users as the two most important key role players.
Top level management here means the Director Generals (Health/education) along with the line directors. The end users are the school teachers and the doctors and medical staff at school and hospital respectively.Any hospital or school is planned, designed, constructed and handed over to the end-users, who use the facilities for at least fifty years before being replaced with a new one. The top level management is responsible for ensuring that the buildings conform to the safety standards throughout their whole life cycle. Safety is a complete package spanning over the entire lifespan of a building.
#Safety #SafeSchoolAndHospitals #DisasterSafety
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Publisher:
UN-HABITAT, UNISDAR
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(2012
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Type / Script:
Publication
in English
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Keywords:
SCHOOLS, EDUCATIONAL SYSTEMS, EDUCATIONAL INSTITUTIONS, INTERNATIONAL SCHOOLS, PRIVATE SCHOOLS, PUBLIC SCHOOLS, RURAL SCHOOLS, NON-FORMAL EDUCATION, BASIC EDUCATION, CONSUMER EDUCATION, EDUCATIONAL SYSTEMS, FAMILY PLANNING, EDUCATION, HEALTH EDUCATION, LITERACY PROGRAMMES
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Thematic Group:
UNHABITAT
:
Human Settlements
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Thesaurus:
11.03.00
- Educational Systems
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Reference Link:
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