The Disaster Preparedness Illusion: Why Cities Have Risk Plans but Remain Dangerously Exposed

Cities are increasingly equipped with disaster risk assessments, emergency response plans and resilience frameworks, yet devastating losses continue to expose weaknesses that these instruments often fail to detect. The problem is not always insufficient knowledge about hazards. In many cases, authorities already know where flooding will occur, which buildings are unsafe and which communities face the greatest danger. The deeper failure lies in whether this knowledge translates into enforceable protections, functioning infrastructure and decisions that reach vulnerable populations.

A study titled "From Disasters to Measurements: Experience-Derived Urban Resilience Indicators from Selected Cases in the Global South," published in the journal Urban Science by Madhavi P. Patil, Ashraf M. Salama, Ayse Ozbil Torun and Eda Seyok of Northumbria University, challenges how cities measure their ability to withstand disasters. Examining 270 empirical studies and 25 documented disaster cases, the researchers identify 80 indicators that expose critical gaps between official preparedness and the conditions shaping actual disaster outcomes.

The Disaster Preparedness Paradox: Cities Have Plans but Fail to Enforce Them

Urban resilience assessments have become crucial to disaster risk reduction, offering governments structured ways to evaluate preparedness, infrastructure and institutional capacity. However, many frameworks prioritise the existence of regulations, emergency arrangements and risk assessments without establishing whether those measures are implemented, maintained or effective when disasters occur.

The research challenges this approach by examining documented failures across floods, earthquakes, wildfires, volcanic eruptions and heatwaves. Its findings reveal that catastrophic outcomes frequently emerged from failures to act on risks already identified before disasters struck, rather than from an absence of technical knowledge or planning instruments.

Accra's devastating 2015 floods illustrate the distinction. Authorities had previously mapped the Odaw basin and documented encroachment into flood-prone areas. Drainage interventions continued over several years, yet underlying settlement patterns, maintenance shortcomings and land-use controls remained unresolved. The hazard was recognised, but the conditions magnifying its consequences persisted.

Similar weaknesses emerged in earthquake-affected cities. In Hatay, Türkiye, demanding construction regulations were undermined by permitting practices and successive amnesties. Nepal's 2015 Gorkha earthquake exposed shortcomings in building-code enforcement, while reconstruction arrangements subsequently linked financial assistance to inspections, providing an example of implementation-oriented recovery.

These cases expose a weakness in conventional measurement. A city may receive recognition for adopting construction standards while buildings remain non-compliant. Similarly, the existence of drainage infrastructure reveals little about whether channels are cleared, encroachment controlled or scheduled maintenance completed before heavy rainfall.

The researchers consequently distinguish between measuring preparedness arrangements and measuring their actual performance. Their proposed indicators examine conditions such as inspection coverage, implementation of previous recommendations and maintenance records, shifting attention from formal commitments toward observable results.

The Invisible City: How Informal Settlements Escape Disaster Risk Assessments

Perhaps the most consequential discovery concerns the exclusion of informal urban development from conventional resilience measurement. Across 19 of the 25 documented disaster cases, informal settlements, unpermitted construction, unregistered livelihoods or occupation of restricted land formed part of the mechanism linking hazards to human harm.

These conditions expose a fundamental weakness in administrative data. Municipal records primarily capture officially recognised properties, approved construction, registered infrastructure and formal economic activities. Communities operating outside these systems can consequently remain absent from the information governments use to assess disaster exposure.

The problem extends beyond inaccurate population counts. Informal development may occupy floodplains, unstable slopes or land adjoining combustible vegetation, while residents have limited access to protective infrastructure. Assessments based on official records can therefore overlook some of the locations where disaster vulnerability is especially pronounced.

The study's flooding cases demonstrate how these risks accumulate. In Mumbai, construction and alterations to the Mithi River contributed to drainage constraints. In Jakarta, subsidence and settlement exposure complicated flood protection. Durban's 2022 floods caused severe losses in communities occupying unstable ground, where insecure tenure and limited formal recognition compounded vulnerability.

The researchers also identify a serious gap between hazard-specific physical conditions and the broad categories used in existing resilience frameworks. Conventional assessments may record whether cities possess drainage systems, evacuation arrangements or construction regulations without measuring the particular conditions that determined losses in previous events.

To address this weakness, the study develops 61 hazard-specific indicators alongside 19 common indicators applicable across disaster types. Flood measures include residential exposure, drainage maintenance and permitting within flood zones. Earthquake measures distinguish code compliance, inspection activity and unpermitted construction, reflecting failures that cannot be captured through building-code adoption alone.

Wildfire indicators examine evacuation routes, settlement exposure and vegetation management, while volcanic eruption measures address warning comprehension and arrangements for evacuating productive assets. Heatwave indicators include dwelling overheating, cooling-space access, mortality monitoring and protections for outdoor workers.

The resulting framework recognises that disaster vulnerability is shaped by the actual condition of urban environments, not simply the severity of the hazard. Its emphasis on informal settlements also raises a governance challenge: cities cannot adequately manage risks affecting populations their administrative systems fail to recognise.

Warning Systems, Public Trust and the Risks That Official Data Cannot Capture

The research identifies another weakness in disaster preparedness: the assumption that issuing an official warning means people have received, understood and acted upon it. Across several documented events, functioning monitoring systems coexisted with serious communication and evacuation failures.

Volcanic eruptions provide particularly revealing examples. At Indonesia's Mount Merapi, some residents returned to dangerous areas to protect livestock. Around Ecuador's Tungurahua volcano, community-based observation arrangements became important in rebuilding relationships between residents and official monitoring systems.

These experiences demonstrate that evacuation decisions are shaped by more than the technical accuracy of warnings. Livelihood dependence, trust in authorities, understanding of alert levels and the practical ability to protect assets can determine whether residents comply with instructions.

The study distinguishes between believing official information and understanding what it requires. Both conditions influence preparedness, yet conventional assessment frameworks rarely capture them adequately. Measuring warning systems through administrative records cannot establish whether messages reached vulnerable households or whether residents considered them credible.

The researchers identify eight conditions missing from the established frameworks examined, including trust in official information, warning reception and comprehension, evacuation routes, provisions for productive assets, implementation of previous recommendations and systematic recording of disaster losses.

Another overlooked dimension concerns how governments recognise harm after disasters. Ahmedabad's 2010 heatwave illustrates the importance of mortality accounting. Excess deaths became apparent through retrospective assessment, contributing to the development of the city's Heat Action Plan in 2013.

The findings suggest that disaster measurement should extend beyond counting physical damage. Where deaths, injuries and disrupted livelihoods are inadequately documented, authorities may struggle to recognise the full distribution of harm or identify the conditions requiring corrective action.

However, collecting this information introduces practical difficulties. Public trust, warning comprehension and informal livelihood conditions often require household surveys and community engagement rather than existing administrative records. Such methods demand additional resources, creating tension between affordable monitoring and meaningful assessment.

From Resilience Scores to Real Protection: Rethinking Urban Disaster Governance

The study reverses the conventional process of resilience measurement. Instead of beginning with expert-designed indicators and subsequently testing them against disaster experience, the researchers derived indicators from documented conditions associated with actual outcomes.

Their systematic review covered 270 peer-reviewed studies published between 2000 and 2025, supplemented by 25 disaster cases from the Global South. The resulting framework combines recurring governance and social vulnerabilities with physical conditions specific to individual hazards.

Its relevance extends to international disaster risk reduction and Sustainable Development Goal 11, particularly efforts to create safer, more resilient cities. For governments, the proposed approach offers a basis for examining whether investments and regulations address demonstrated weaknesses rather than merely expanding the number of preparedness instruments.

The research nevertheless acknowledges important limitations. The literature is unevenly distributed across hazards, while the review excludes non-English publications. Post-disaster documentation also emphasises failures more than successful protection, potentially shaping which conditions enter the indicator set.

Crucially, the 80 indicators have not been validated as a complete operational assessment system. The researchers have not established universal thresholds, calculated implementation costs or demonstrated that using the framework reduces losses during future disasters. These questions require field application and repeated measurement.

For resource-constrained municipalities, the proposed changes would require balancing additional information needs against administrative capacity. Incorporating community surveys, spatial mapping and implementation records could improve the visibility of neglected risks, but such improvements cannot be assumed without practical evaluation.

The broader finding is that disaster preparedness cannot be established through documentation alone. A resilience framework may accurately record the existence of plans while failing to identify weak enforcement, unprotected settlements or warnings residents cannot act upon. The challenge facing urban governments is to measure the conditions that determine whether protection functions in practice, rather than relying on institutional arrangements whose effectiveness remains untested.