The proposal of an urban risk monitoring system to direct the development of resilient cities

Traditional vulnerability assessment methods are 'reactive' measures for mitigating the risks accumulated in a city during its process of urbanization. Accurate data accumulation is cumbersome, and due to the time taken for conducting surveys, there is often a time lag of few years between the initiation of the survey and completion of the analysis. In rapidly changing urban economies this would result in an unreliable representation of risk, where, in order to bring about maximum impact through urban planning strategies, it is important to ensure the real-time accuracy of the analysis. This study proposes the implementation of an Urban Risk Monitoring System within municipal entities which can represent real-time vulnerability monitoring by connecting data owned by multiple government sectors. It discusses the need and feasibility for implementing such a monitoring system in developing nations where it can aid in directing developments with 'proactive' measures to ensure a safer growth rather than risk accumulation. Furthermore, it presents our current endeavors in Yangon, Myanmar, to implement such a system and its use case samples for evaluating urban functions for emergency situations in terms of ambulance and fire services access as well as evacuation space capacity for the residents.