CITYNET Disaster Cluster Annual Seminar
The CITYNET Disaster Cluster Seminar (DCS) is an annual seminar during which participants from local governments, industry, civil society organizations, and others working in DRR come together to share knowledge and best practices on DRR topics.
Description
The DCS is held each year as a platform for CITYNET Disaster Cluster members to discuss best practices in disaster resilience and to learn from each sector and city. Each seminar holds sessions targeting specific DRR issues, with presenters from various cities and sectors.
Topics range from how their cities prepare for disasters to how organizations are innovating technologies to aid in disaster prevention, and more. Each session is followed by rich discussions during a question and answer period, during which participants have the chance to engage with and learn from one another.
In addition, each DCS includes site visits to DRR locations throughout the hosting city so participants can view tangent DRR management techniques and take these home to their cities or organizations to strengthen DRR capacity at home.
The DCS has three main goals:
1. Share: To share better practices among CITYNET Disaster Cluster members.
2. Support: To identify needs and strengthen city-to-city cooperation in DRR.
3. Localize: Enhance the applicability of lessons learned by understanding local concerns.
Another key goal of the DCS is to facilitate city-to-city (C2C) cooperation and strengthen networks between cities and organizations of the Asia-Pacific Region. By bringing together CITYNET Disaster Cluster members, each has the ability to network with others and strengthen cooperation for possible future DRR collaborations.
Did the Sendai Framework change or contribute to changes in your activities/organization? If so, how?
The Sendai Framework helps to structure the seminar, as each session features topics on one of the four priorities of the Framework.
What led you to make this commitment/initiative?
What was your position before making this Voluntary Commitment / prior to the Sendai Framework?
After a series of devastating disasters in the Asia-Pacific Region in 2004/2005, the CITYNET Disaster Cluster was established from the need for an overarching body to connect cities and organizations to share DRR best practices to reduce impacts of future disasters; the DCS was borne as an initiative of this CITYNET Disaster Cluster. Prior to the Sendai Framework, the DCS adhered to the guiding principles of the Hyogo Framework. When the Sendai Framework was introduced in 2015, the DCS shifted its seminar topics to adhere to the Sendai Framework.
