Typhoon Haiyan: Lessons for urban disaster response and recovery

This briefing examines the challenges the city government faced, first in the immediate humanitarian response and later during the recovery and rehabilitation phases. Drawing on these experiences, it makes recommendations for local and national government and humanitarian agencies to improve their capacity for a more coordinated, efficient and sustainable response to future disasters.

The brief provides the following recommendations to various stakeholders for response and recovery (pp. 3-4):

• National government should:
  • build the capacity of the Office of Civil Defence, key national agencies, and local disaster risk reduction and management offices to take the lead role in coordination;
  • improve support for monitoring the implementation of ongoing recovery projects.
• Local government should:
  • work with national government to strengthen the capacity of local disaster risk reduction and management offices;
  • involve the private sector in the Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Council and include them in contingency planning so they can ready their resources if needed.
• Humanitarian organisations should:
  • invest resources in engaging with local government, particularly in urban programmes.