Guoyi HAN1, Åse JOHANNESSEN1, Anders PÅLSSON2, Arno ROSEMARIN1, Cecilia RUBEN1, Thor Axel STENSTRÖM1, Åsa SWARTLING1 1Stockholm Environment Institute, Sweden, Kingdom of; 2Kristianstad City, Sweden

1. Enhancing urban resilience to extreme waters:
The WASH & RESCUE Initiative
Guoyi Han, Åse Johannessen, Anders
Pålsson, Arno Rosemarin, Cecilia Ruben,
Thor Axel Stenström, Åsa Swartling

2. This presentation is about a new intitaive:
Water, Sanitation and Hygiene in
Resilient Cities and Urban Areas
Adapting to Extreme Waters
WASH & RESCUE

3. What I would like to talk to you about:
• About the WASH & RESCUE project:
Why, what, and how
• To get your feedback
• To invite you for partnership
and join the network

4. WASH & RESCUE: Why? (I)
• The general context
– Disaster risk is a matter of development
– The world is increasingly urban
– Human health and security in urban areas is
increasingly under threat from extreme waters, and
climate change is likely to exacerbate the impacts

5. WASH & RESCUE: Why? (II)
• The Challenges for urban WASH system
and DRR
– The fundamental design principle is still
predominantly based on ‘control and protection’ rather
than building resilience;
– Fragmentation and separation of urban WASH
system planning and the DRR measures;
– Lack of the cross-scale linkages

6. WASH & RESCUE: Why? (III)
• Sustainable WASH technologies have
been explored for ten years by the
EcoSanRes Programme at SEI;
• The need to synthesize the existing
knowledge;
• The need for transferring knowledge to
action;

7. WASH & RESCUE: What? (I)
• To seek integration of disaster risk reduction and
climate adaptation in urban context, by
achieving impact in:
– understanding risk, with focus on assessment
approaches integrating water, sanitation, hygiene and
health aspects;
– dealing with and reducing risk, with focus on the
available preventative measures and actions;
– bridging knowledge to action through synthesizing
and social learning.

8. WASH & RESCUE: What? (II)
• To examine multiple scales interactions in
various social, ecological and cultural contexts
through case studies guided by a resilience
perspective, guided by a set of key questions:
– River basin level -- The link to ecosystem
management in the river basin, for example;
– City level -- Good urban planning for resilient urban
areas/cities
– Technology systems for resilient WASH services

9. WASH & RESCUE: How? (I)
Conceptual Framework
Knowledge to Action Conceptural Framework

10. WASH & RESCUE: How? (II)
Mode of analysis
• Multi-scale analysis – river basin, city planning,
and technical systems, where the city scale is
the focal scale and it needs to be situated in the
river basin (the upper scale) and linked to
technical system components (the lower scale);
• Social Learning and multiple stakeholder
engagement;
• Meta-analysis and synthesis: case study and
ideally comparative case study.

11. WASH & RESCUE: How? (III)
Case Study Protocol
• Story lines – defines the core inquiry for every case study
• Approach
– Urban WASH system disaster risk screening
– Governance/social learning screening
– Risk management strategy screening (including ecosystem based
measures, for example)
• Data collection
– Records and statistics
– Survey
• Analysis
– Risk assessment
– Interventions/management measures and strategies
– Governance/social learning

12. WASH & RESCUE: How? (IV)
WASH and DRR system screening
E.g., urban WASH system flood risk screening
Key WASH Components Exposure to Vulnerability Risk (focus
extreme water on human
conditions, (e.g., Sensitivity Resilience and eco
100-year floods) People Critical People Critical system heath)
infrastructure infrastructure
…(main …(sub-category) … … … … … …
category)
WASH SYSTEM COMPONENTS WASH DISASTER RISK SCREENING

13. Network and Collaboration
• MSB – Swedish and International WASH activities
• SWH Cluster Group for Water & DDR (incl Sida, FOI, FSH, etc)
• Mistra-SWECIA (SEI), Transforming Governance theme (SEI), the Adaptive
governance, learning and networks theme (Stockholm Resilience Center)
• Swedish VAKA network
• SuSanA (Sustainable Sanitation Alliance) especially working group 8 of
emergency sanitation practitioners
• Stoutenberg group (ACF, Oxfam, WASTE, Red Cross, MSF)
• SEI EcoSanRes expertise and the 8 global knowledge nodes in developing
countries;
• UNISDR: Resilient cities campaign;
• Partnership for Environment and Disaster Risk Reduction (PEDRR
www.pedrr.net ) where SEI is already involved.

15. Dr. Arno Rosemarin
arno.rosemarin@sei-international.org
http://www.sei-international.org/