Planning Needs Assessment for Responding to Large Disaster Events in Cities: Case Study from Dhaka, Bangladesh

Earthquakes happen without warning. Although urban communities are quite capable of responding to frequent disaster events, there is a need for conducting advanced contingency planning to handle extreme events. One reason for conducting contingency planning is to facilitate a rapid emergency response by allowing planners to have more time for advanced preparedness measures. Before an earthquake emergency, planners will be able to consider different risk scenarios in order to develop a coordination structure, identify spatial planning needs for reducing the risk, consider likely post disaster needs, conduct capacity assessment to identify the key resource requirements (both human and physical), identify the critical gaps for immediate action, and define the policy changes/revisions, new strategies and approaches for responding to large city-level emergencies.This paper evaluates the potential earthquake risk scenario in Dhaka city (Former Dhaka City Corporation which was divided respectively into Dhaka North and South City Corporation in 2011), and discusses the planning needs that are required for capacity enhancement in order for the city respond to large-scale disasters such as earthquakes.