WCCD and UNISDR to launch ISO 37120 in 45 cities

The World Council on City Data (WCCD) and the United Nations Office for Disaster Risk Reduction (UNISDR) have announced a collaborative venture to implement the new WCCD-hosted ISO 37120 standard in 45 cities around the world to make them more resilient and sustainable.

“Good data is necessary to ensure that cities are able to plan and recover from extreme weather events and other disasters, and this is where the WCCD is able to complement the tremendous work of the UNISDR, particularly with their Ten Essentials for Making Cities Resilient,” Patricia McCarney, WCCD President and CEO, told Cities Today. “The Ten Essentials are now more hands on and require cities to implement concrete practices and policies so that the Essentials become more operational, functional and can deliver concrete results. In working with the WCCD, UNISDR can quantify the effectiveness of those practices and policies, and identify ways to improve.”

A key goal of the collaboration between UNISDR and WCCD is to ensure that the Ten Essentials for Making Cities Resilient will be incorporated into the ISO standard for resilient cities. The Ten Essentials focus on issues such as good urban planning, land-use, a risk-informed citizenry, safe schools and health facilities, protection of eco-systems, early warnings and emergency management.

Developed by the WCCD to create more resilient and sustainable cities, ISO 37120 provides a new method for cities to compare with each other through a standardised grouping of 100 city indicators that measure the performance of city services and quality of life, allowing for benchmarking and the sharing of best practices.

“The Making Cities Resilient Campaign launched four years ago now has 2,500 participating cities and towns with a combined population of some 700 million people,” said Margareta Wahlström, Head of UNISDR. “We have 45 role model cities that are ready to implement the new ISO 37120 standard for resilient and sustainable cities. We will work together with WCCD to further build the family of ISO standards for resilient cities.”

By creating an open data platform for cities globally, the World Council on City Data enables cities to sort themselves into peer groups globally, for example by region, population size, GDP per capita or climate type. The 20 founding cities of the World Council come from all continents and include Amman, Buenos Aires, Johannesburg, London, Makati and Shanghai.

“In my opinion UNISDR’s Making Cities Resilient Campaign and the Ten Essentials are two of the most important initiatives addressing resilience,” added McCarney. “This work by UNISDR in partnership with the WCCD and the work being undertaken within the ISO in building a family of standards for resilient and sustainable cities will provide the essential tools for cities to be resilient. This is a very exciting prospect and will be of enormous benefit to improving the quality of life in cities.”

The announcement was made prior to the opening of the Third UN World Conference on Disaster Reduction, which adopted a new framework for disaster risk reduction that will pay particular attention to reducing urban risk.