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Building Urban Resilience to Disasters in the Kyrgyz Republic in support of the Kyrgyz Republic State Agency for Architecture, Construction and Communal Services (Gosstroi)
TheBuilding Urban Resilience to Disasters in the Kyrgyz Republic was carried out in collaboration with ICF International and in support of the Kyrgyz Republic State Agency for Architecture, Construction and Communal Services (Gosstroi)
The World Bank was the official commissioner of the project, which looked at the roots of resilience building in urban planning and construction. The UCL EPICentre team was heavily involved in the analysis of the urban expansion of the capital fo Kyrgyzstan - Bishkek - and of four other cities. Detailed GIS-based analyses were carried out using novel geospatial datasets (Global Human Settlement Layers) and multi-temporal series of Landsat acquisitions. The analysis allowed to conclude that the areas surrounding Bishkek have witnessed, during the decades, a substantial informal development which has occupied green belts and hazardous areas. New developments are also not as dense as the rest of the city, increasing the cost of providing infrastructure to all.
The review of the existing framework for incorporating disaster resilience in housing design and construction also uncovered the seismic vulnerability of specific building typologies in Bishkek. Concerns were also raised with regard to the building permit procedure and the enforcement of modern building codes for new constructions.
The importance of improving seismic resilience by acting on urban planning and construction practice was stressed in the training workshop provided at the end of the project. Scenario games, alongside roundtable discussions, used to call emergency managers and decision makers upon the need for to a more shared vision of the future drivers of urban development in Kyrgyzstan.