Natural disasters impose a significant cost on developing countries. Many cities are located in hazard prone areas that also provide some other natural advantage—accessibility near rivers and shorelines or fertile soils near volcanic areas. Fast growing cities are densely packed, so if a hazard event occurs, more people will be affected and indirect impacts, such as epidemics following disruption of water supply, spread faster. Rapid urbanization in many parts of the world also means that the number of cities and the urban population in areas where natural hazards occur will be growing for some time to come. Reducing disaster risk in urban areas is therefore a pressing challenge for city, state and national governments. Many hazards are also recurrent and so there will be general awareness of risk in cities exposed to them. But what is often lacking is operationally relevant and publicly available risk information upon which public policy and private sector response can be based.
Geophysical hazard events, such as cyclones or earthquakes, turn into natural disasters when they affect human or economic systems that cannot withstand their impact. Natural disaster risk, therefore, is determined by hazard characteristics (e.g., the probability of an event of a given magnitude), exposure and vulnerability. Since all hazard risk components vary across space, risk identification must rely on geographic information. Traditionally, such information has been collected using field observation—geological and socioeconomic surveys—in an expensive and time consuming process. New technologies that support the development of a data base for risk identification include tools for data capture and for information management. Data capture using remote sensing tools has made the largest strides in the last few years. Recently the European GMES program (Global Monitoring for Environment and Security) is developing together with member states and industry geospatial tools and services to support the European response capacity to crises outside Europe. In this context the role of these developments in urban resilience mechanisms will be discussed.