This Workbook offers a step-by-step guide for city officials in proactively planning for natural disasters and climate change impacts. It is based on learning from three cities in Vietnam - Ha Noi, Can Tho, and Dong Hoi - that developed Local Resilience Action Plans (LRAPs) containing a set of prioritized actions, related to both infrastructure as well as policy/ regulatory and socioeconomic actions. These LRAPs are based on vulnerability and risks assessments, a gaps analysis drawing on an inventory of planned investments and policy changes, and multi-stakeholder priority setting. The...

While not all natural disasters can be avoided, their impact on a population can be mitigated through effective planning and preparedness. These are the lessons to be learned from Japan's own megadisaster: the Great East Japan Earthquake of 2011, the fi rst disaster ever recorded that included an earthquake, a tsunami, a nuclear power plant accident, a power supply failure, and a large-scale disruption of supply chains. It is a sad fact that poor communities are often hardest hit and take the longest to recover from disaster. Disaster risk management (DRM) should therefore be taken into...