Indonesia is a disaster prone country due to its unique geographic position, where four global tectonic plates i.e. the Eurasian, Indo-Australian, Pacific and the Philippines plates meet each others, resulting in high seismic and volcanic activities in many parts of the country. In the past few years, climate change impacts have been identified as causing various natural calamities.
The recent political transition in Indonesia leading to the devolution of governance has brought new challenges to many new local government authorities in term of dealing with disaster impact and disaster risk. Cities are now expected to develop capacities for improving disaster risk management efforts, as vulnerabilities are known to increase in the current urban environment, especially in the fast growing cities with high population density, but are lagging behind in infrastructure investments and public awareness to disaster risk is relatively low.
Efforts to develop strategy to reduce disaster risk in the urban areas are currently in place in Indonesia, and in particular, a strategy for urban disaster reduction for medium sized cities is currently being developed by the Agency for Development Planning under the National Ministry of Planning, in collaboration with the Center for Disaster Mitigation, ITB, aiming at improving the safety of the urban population against future disasters, through the mainstreaming of disaster risk reduction programs in urban management. Priorities emanating from the Hyogo Framework for Actions 2005-2015 are used as the basis for developing the disaster risk reduction strategies, and key actions necessary to carry out the agenda are identified within each stage of the urban management processes, i.e. planning, organizing, budgeting, actuating and controlling. Some relevant local government authorities are sharing their urban disaster risk reduction experiences in the process, where best practices are captured and put in the strategy for the benefit of other less experienced cities.