THE PLANNING PROFESSION

By

C.REVAPATHI, Planner

Planning is a profession that combines the tools and expertise of the physical and social
sciences to manage urban growth and development. Planning is both systematic in
approach and comprehensive in scope. Planning is oriented towards the future, but is
solidly grounded in a realistic understanding of current problems and feasible solutions.

Planning is not an isolated activity; rather, it involves all segments of the community.
Planning offers students a rich and rewarding career full of challenges. Planning is done
in many arenas such as transportation, housing, health, neighborhood development,
urban design, environment, disaster prevention. Planners work in every state and
around the world.

Planning is a decision making process involving critical analysis of the existing

situations and problems evaluation of the various alternatives to solve these problems
and selection of the relevant ones giving necessary priorities, based upon local needs
and resources by the cooperative efforts of the people both official and non official with
a view of facilitating the individual and for community growth and development.

Planning is anticipatory decision making…………………..Rusell

Planning is deciding in advance what is to be done………New Man
Planning is a trap laid to capture the future………………..Allen
Planning is anticipating……………………………………….Earl Strong

Planning takes place within a legal framework. Therefore, planners will work with legal
tools such as ordinances, to ensure the buildings and development meets the standards
of health, safety, and welfare for the community, as well as allows for new innovations
such as solar panels, home businesses, and mixed uses of buildings (including housing,
shopping, services, etc.).

Importance of Planning
• Planning determines the future
• Planning facilitates coordination
Planners help to shape cities, smaller communities, and even rural areas. They help
determine how communities will grow and how they will adjust to change. Their
contribution to the design and development of communities is to bring together data,
citizens’ ideas and opinions, civic leaders’ goals, and good planning practice into a
deliberative process of community decision making.

Planners identify the problems facing the community, focusing in particular on the
physical, built environment. They may determine that the community needs more public
transit or needs to encourage retail businesses in underserved neighborhoods.
Planners may help decide where a new water pumping and filtration plant is located and
determine what the impact of that plant will be on the environment.

Planners help create the process by which residents, business people, mayors and city
council members, and advocates work together to create a vision for the community, the
goals the community wishes to achieve for itself, and the actions it will take to reach the
goals. An example of a goal may be creating more affordable housing for residents.
While the commercial market will provide many things for the community, housing for
upper income residents, retail, and many services.

Planning identifies the gaps in the needs of the community and helps to provide needed
programs, development, and services. Planning will also work with commercial
developers to add useful services to development projects. For example, planning may
encourage the developers to provide parks.

Planners work in rural areas, suburban areas, and large cities. They function in the
public sector within federal, state, and local governments. They also work in nonprofit
organizations and within the private sector in real estate development companies and
planning or multidisciplinary consulting firms.

Common tools used by planners include web-based geographical mapping systems,

community meetings and workshops, and graphic designs of sites and buildings.
Planners must be familiar with a range of information such as population, health, jobs,
the economy and trends.
 CONSERVATION OF LAKES

By

C.REVAPATHI, Planner

Water is the "Elixir of Life". It makes up over one half of the human body. All living
things, from the tiniest insect to the tallest tree, need water to survive. Water is dynamic
resource, which keeps moving in the nature's "Hydrological cycles" natural process of
the continuous movement of water between ocean, atmosphere and the land that
means the same water molecules have been transferred time and time again from the
oceans and the land surface into the atmosphere by evaporation, dropped on the land
as precipitation and transferred back to the sea by rivers and groundwater. This endless
circulation is known as the "hydrologic cycle"

Lakes and reservoirs are vital to the economic development process. They are
important sources for food, fresh water and building materials and provide valuable
services such as water treatment and erosion control. They form vital ecosystems for
aquatic biodiversity; and provide livelihood and social, economic and aesthetic benefits
that are essential for improving the quality of life of the basin communities. Human
activities are profoundly impacting their ecological integrity. Lakes are closed systems
with relatively long retention times, which can trap pollutants for extended periods. They
have complex dynamics and characteristics, and are particularly vulnerable to a range
of anthropogenic stresses. The distribution of lakes is governed primarily by variations
in geology and climate.

CONSERVATION

Conservation is the action taken to slow-down the processes of decay and prolong the
life of water bodies.
conservation. All the processes of looking after an Item so as to retain its position,
state. It includes maintenance and may, according to circumstances, include
preservation, conservation, reconstruction and adaptation and will becommonly a
combination of more than one of these.
conservation. Returning the existing position to a known earlier state by removing
accretions or by reassembling existing components.
NEED OF CONSERVATION OF LAKES

Lakes provides

 services,

 aesthetic enjoyment

 recreation

 fish

 transportation

 water for irrigation

 drinking

 dilution of pollutants

The lakes and reservoirs, all over the country without exception, are in varying degrees
of environmental degradation. The degradation is due to encroachments eutrophication
(from domestic and industrial effluents) and silt. There has been a quantum jump in
population during the last century without corresponding expansion of civic facilities
resulting in lakes and reservoirs, especially the urban ones, becoming sinks for
contaminants. The main causes for the impaired conditions of the lakes could be
summarized as under.

Nutrients from wastewater from municipal and domestic effluents

• Organic, inorganic and toxic pollution from industrial effluents

• Storm water runoff.

Pollutants entering from non- point sources

• Nutrients through fertilizers, toxic pesticides and other chemicals, mainly from
agriculture runoff

• Organic pollution from human settlements spread over areas along the periphery of
the lakes and reservoirs
IDENTIFIED PROBLEMS

The human settlements and public effluent sources are the chief factors for the degradation of
lakes, particularly the urban lakes. A lake front property has societal prestige, which causes
intense shoreline development in urban centres and thus adversely impacts on the lake water
quality. The anthropogenic pressures in the catchment itself has resulted in degradation of the
catchment area due to deforestation, extensive agricultural use and consequent erosion and
increased silt flows, which have vitiated the quality of water stored in the lakes. Infrastructure
development, housing pressure and encroachments have resulted in converting all urban lakes
into hyper eutrophic state. Most urban lakes and rural lakes have vanished under this pressure. In
the lakes, which have survived, the drinking water supply has been substantially reduced or
become totally non potable, flood absorption capacity impaired, bio-diversity threatened, and
livelihood of fisher folks affected. Reduction in the Osmansagar and Himayatsagar Lakes which
are sources of drinking water supply to Hyderabad in Andhra Pradesh, Udaipur lakes in
Rajasthan, Nainital lakes in Uttaranchal, etc are a few examples.

The water quality of urban lakes has deteriorated so much as to cause serious
disturbance to the bio-diversity of the lake environment. Bio-remedial measures alone
as in the case of the Powai lakes in Mumbai, the Kodaikanal and Ooty lakes in Tamil
Nadu, etc., have been unable to achieve lake equilibrium in full.

Common Problems

Public Interest Litigation has shown up the following problems as common to all lakes
(CSE, 2002)

• Apathy of the executive in preventing discharge of domestic and industrial

effluents into the lakes,
• Lack of proper sewage system
• Encroachments due to the nexus between the executive and the builders lobby
• Lack of access to scientific data and scientific norms for restricting building
activity around the lakes
• Ineffective technology for cleaning up pollutants
 • Unclear laws, too many corrupt and confused authorities (numerous govt.
departments), plethora of land owning govt. agencies, political vested interests,
and absence of a clear lake environment policy.
LAKE CONSERVATION METHODS

1.Bio Manipulation

"Bio manipulation" includes lake improvement procedures that alter the food web
to favour grazing on algae by zooplankton, or that eliminate fish species that recycle
nutrients. Bio manipulation is new to the lake management community, particularly to
those without training in limnology. There seems to be little question that the bio
manipulation approach will become increasingly popular due its lower cost, and the
absence of machinery and toxic chemicals (in some cases), and to its effectiveness. Bio
manipulation involves eliminating certain fish species or restructuring the fish
community to favour the dominance of piscivorous fish instead of planktivorous fish.

Food webs are controlled by resource limitation ("bottom-up") and by predation

("top-down"). Undoubtedly, solar energy and nutrient inputs and dynamics of an eco-
system set its overall level of production, so to that extent the control may be envisaged
as bottom-up, but within those limits, some of the "coarse-tuning" and much of the "fine-
tuning" of structure and function in the system results from the complexity of top-down
processes.

2. Sediment Removal

Freshwater lake sediment removal is usually undertaken to deepen a lake thereby

increasing it's volume to enhance fish production, to remove nutrient rich sediment, to
remove toxic or hazardous material, or to reduce the abundance of rooted aquatic
plants. Review of more than 60 projects and examination of 5 case histories (Lake
Trummen, Sweden; Lake Herman, South Dakota; Wisconsin Spring Ponds; Steinmetz
Lake, New York; and Lilly Lake, Wisconsin), reveals that the first three objectives are
usually met through sediment removal. The technique is recommended for deepening
and for reducing phosphorus release from sediment. Sediment removal to control toxic
materials is possible with minimal environmental impact when proper equipment is
used, but it may be extremely expensive. Dredging will remove rooted aquatic plants,
however, their re-encroachment rate will be depth, sediment texture, and sediment
nutrient dependent

3. Circular Canalisation

Practically all phosphorus sources can be made to bypass a lake through a circular
canal, and it was most effectively demonstrated in the now classic conservation case of
Lake Washington.

4. Hypolimnetic Aeration

Hypolimnetic aeration/oxygenation is an effective means of improving domestic and

industrial water quality, satisfying downstream water release standards and creating
suitable habitat for yearlong survival of cold water fish. It may be achieved by pure
oxygen injection, or air injection. With air injection and downstream released, care must
be taken not to supersaturate the water with nitrogen gas. Hypolimnetic aeration is the
only known method of creating suitable cold water habitat in most warm eutro phic
lakes. This system of aeration can result in adequate oxygen values throughout the lake
without intolerable increases in hypolimnetic temperatures. Oxygen can be added to the
hypolimnium without greatly heating it, or mixing it with epilimnetic or metalimnetic
water.

Another use is to eliminate taste and colour problems by precipitating iron and
manganese. Hypolimnetic aeration may promote some control of algae by a type of
phosphorus inactivation procedure under high oxygen, high iron conditions. A classic
case history is the St. Paul water supply.

Hypolimnetic aerators need a large hypolimnium to work properly; consequently, any

use of these aerators in shallow lakes and reservoirs should be done cautiously, if at all.

5. Dilution/Flushing

Dilution/flushing has been documented as an effective conservation technique for

Moses and Green Lakes in Washington State. The dilution water added in both lakes
was low in nitrogen and phosphorus content relative to the lake or normal input water.
Flus hing rates were about ten times normal during the spring-summer periods in Moses
Lake and three times normal on an annual basis in Green Lake. Improvement in quality
(nutrients, algae, and transparency) was on the order of 50% in Moses Lake and even
grea ter in Green Lake. Quality improvement may occur from physical effects of
washout and instability if only high nutrient water is available.

6. Artificial Circulation

Artificial circulation eliminates thermal stratification or prevents its formation, through the
injection of compressed air into lake water from a pipe or ceramic diffuser at the lake's
bottom.

Algal blooms may be controlled, possibly through one or more of these processes:

• Mixing to the lake's bottom will increase a cell's time in darkness, leading to
reduced net photosynthesis.
• Introduction of dissolved oxygen to the lake's bottom may inhibit phosphorus
release from sediments.
• Rapid contact of water with the atmosphere, as well as the introduction of carbon
dioxide-rich water during the initial period of mixing, can lower pH, leading to a
shift from blue-greens to less noxious green algae.
• When zooplankton are mixed to the lake's bottom, they are less vulnerable to
sight-feeding fish, resulting in the increase of consumption of algal cells by the
zooplankton.

7. Chemical Precipitation in the Lake

Iron, calcium and aluminium have salts that can combine with (or sorb) inorganic
phosphorus or remove phosphorus-containing particulate matter from the water column
as part of a flock. This method has been applied in the reservoirs in the Netherlands.
Tot al phosphorus concentrations and algal biomass were successfully reduced in the
Braakman and the Grote Rug Reservoirs. The disadvantage of this method is that some
of the phosphorus precipitated is not bound permanently in the sediments and thus it
could contribute to a later internal loading.
Aluminium is most often chosen because phosphorus binds tightly to its salts over a
wide range of ecological conditions, including low or zero dissolved oxygen. In practice,
aluminium sulphate (alum) or sodium aluminates (for soft water lakes) is added to t he
water, and pinpoint, colloidal aggregates of aluminium hydroxide are formed. In
addition, if enough alum is added, a layer of 1 to 2 inches of aluminium hydroxide will
cover the sediments and significantly retard the release of phosphorus into the water
column as an "internal load".

Phosphorus inactivation has been highly effective and long-lasting in thermally stratified
natural lakes, especially where an adequate dose has been given to the sediments and
where sufficient diversion of nutrient incomes has occurred. These treatments have
been made to the more common smaller lakes and farm ponds as well.

8. Lime Treatment to Reduce Eutrophication

While lime treatment has been extensively used to mitigate acidification effects, several
studies of calcium carbonate precipitation led to the hypothesis that the addition of lime
to lakes can also reduce eutrophication. Although biological reactions must influence
phosphorus biogeochemistry, the effect of lime treatment on phosphorus
biogeochemistry can be easily explained via apatite formation.

The generally accepted model for apatite formation is that phosphorus initially adsorbs
to calcite and then a surface rearrangement produces phosphate hetero-nuclei that
ultimately form the stable mineral apatite. If the surface application of calcium hydroxide
was repeated for a number of years, the titration should exceed an end point,
phosphorus and calcium should not re-dissolve, and phosphorus could be converted
into apatite.

Lime has been added to several lakes and dugouts in Western Canada (Frisken, Figure
Eight, Andorra, Beaumaris, Valencia, Halfmoon, Gour, Monnette, Desrosier, Frey,
Fedora, Pederson, Sullivan, Schreger, Limno) to improve water quality. These
hardwater la kes are eutrophic due to high natural, agricultural, or urban loadings of
phosphorus. Source control of phosphorus loadings would be extremely difficult at all
sites. Most of the lakes are primarily used for recreation but the dugouts have been
used for human and agricultural water supplies. In two of the study sites, Figure Eight
Lake and Frisken Lake, most of the sediment iron is converted into pyrite. These lakes
have little reactive iron and presumably phosphorus biogeochemistry is not controlled
by iron reactions.

9. Phosphorus Control in Waste Water Treatment

Conventional waste water treatment is intended to reduce the organic matter in waste
water and not to control phosphorus. The purely biological and mechanical process can
remove 20-25% of phosphorus initially present, while modified, activated sludge pla nts
can remove about 55% of phosphorus present in some special cases. Thus,
phosphorus removal efficiency of conventional waste water treatment is very limited and
usually not adequate to meet the requirements of a phosphorus program. In addition,
during the summer, waste water discharges may dominate stream flow during dry
periods when total flow is lower than usual, and water cannot hold as much dissolved
oxygen as it does during the cooler periods of the year. Phosphorus removal efficiency
in existing treatment plants can be improved by the application of a chemical
precipitation process to the effluent.

Phosphorus from waste water can be effectively eliminated with a precipitation process.
In this process aluminium or iron salts or lime are added to the waste water which form
insoluble compounds with the phosphates. Different kinds of precipitation pro cesses
may be employed, such as pre-precipitation, simultaneous precipitation and post-
precipitation in combination with the biological process. The most comprehensive
experience of phosphorus precipitation has been obtained in Sweden, and by early
1978, more than 600 municipal waste water treatment plants were operated with
combined biological and chemical treatment.

REFERENCES

• www.chebucto.ns.ca
• www.clean-flo.com
• WALTA www.ielrc.org/content/e0202
• National Lake Conservation Policy, Ministry of Environment & Forests, National
River Conservation Directorate, New Delhi.
• Guidelines For Repair, Renovation And Restoration Of Water Bodies With
Domestic Support, Government of India, Ministry of Water Resources,2009
 • The Integrated Lake Treatment And Management Component
(ILTMC) Of The GREEN HYDERABAD ENVIRONMENT PROGRAMME (GHEP)
• HMDA reports on restoration of Lakes under GHEP
• Irrigation and Catchment Area Development Department, Hyderabad
• Lake division, Buddha Bhavan, GHMC, Hyderabad

TOWN PLANNING AND DISASTER MANAGEMENT

By

C.REVAPATHI, Planner

Town Planning can be viewed as a method of decision making that identified goals and
ends, determines the means and programmes which are thought to achieve these ends.
Accordingly, town planning can be defined as the art and science of ordering the use of
land character and the siting of buildings and communication routes so as to secure the
maximum degree of economy, convenience and beauty. Therefore the desirable end of
town planning effort is an aesthetically pleasing environment. Town planning is a future
oriented problem solving strategy within a defined area. Town planning is tailored to set
goals based on the images of the desired future. Policies are designed and plans are
implemented to guide the system towards the goals, or to change the existing system if
it cannot achieve the goals.

TOWN PLANNING TOOLS

There are two key tools in Town Planning endeavors. These are – Development plans
and development control mechanisms.

Development Plan

A development plan is called by different names – “General Plan”, City Plan”, and
“Master Plan”. A development plan is defined as the official statement of a municipal
legislature body, which sets forth the major policies concerning future physical
development of a settlement. A development plan is a policy instrument, it must provide
basis for fulfilling the yeaning and respiration of the people. A city is a corporate entity.
The local government has control of the city- its nature, extent and manner of
development. Therefore the development plan provides the legal and technical
instrument for such local government control.

Development Control Mechanisms

The development control mechanisms provide tools through which planning goals and
ideals are achieved. In relation to disaster risk reduction, it provides the tools with which
disaster resistance plans are prepared and implemented.

Robert (1974) identified two technical devices used in development control processes.
These are land – use zoning and planning standards. The planning standards also have
two main divisions. These are the prescriptive and the regulatory standards. The
prescriptive standards are the guides or specifications used in dimensioning in the
preparation of a disaster risk reduction plan or any development plan for that matter.

Planning standards are used in Town Planning as recognized model for imitations
(Keeble, 1976). They are legislated standards which in most cases are mandatory and
inflexible. They serve as tools or specifications before building operations can be
approved under the law. Examples of the planning standards are residential density
standards, plot ratio, setbacks from the stream, rivers or roads, airspace standard car
parking control standards and highway standards among others.

Above all, the planning standards are entrenched in the building and sub-division
regulations as well as the sanitary and zoning codes of local government councils for
enforcement.

DISASTER

The term ‘disaster’, meaning ‘bad star’ in Latin, is defined as an impact of a natural or
manmade hazard that causes human suffering or creates human needs that the victims
cannot alleviate without assistance. The word’s root is from astrology and implies that
when the stars are in a bad position, a bad event is about to happen. In a recent
document published by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) in the
Americas, a disaster is defined as ’a social crisis situation occurring when a physical
phenomenon of natural, socio-natural or anthropogenic origin negatively impacts
vulnerable populations causing intense, serious and widespread disruption of the
normal functioning of the affected social unit’. According to another widespread
definition, disasters occur when hazards strike in vulnerable areas.

Recent events have shown that there is no country that does not stand the threat of a
disaster, though they may be threatened at different levels. Therefore, disaster
preparedness is no longer a choice; it is mandatory irrespective of where one lives.

Risk types vary and increase depending on a country’s geographic location. For
instance, countries like China, Indonesia, Iran and Pakistan are prone to earthquakes.
Small Island states in the Pacific region and countries like the Maldives are prone to
various types of threats from the sea. Bangladesh and parts of China and India
experience floods each year.

IMPACT OF NATURAL DISASTERS

Asia and the Pacific is the world’s most disaster-prone region, accounting for 91 per
cent of deaths from natural disasters in the past century and 49 per cent of the resulting
economic damage. Each year for the past 15 years, an average of 41,000 people have
died in the region from natural disasters, which annually inflicted $29 billion worth of
damage. Of the world’s 10 most severe natural disasters in 2004, five occurred in the
Asian and Pacific region, causing damage amounting to $55 billion, about 70 per cent of
the total damage, estimated at $80 billion.

Natural disasters have a profound impact on the quality of life through their destruction
of food crops and livestock, shelter and other aspects of the built environment, and
forced dislocation of households and communities. Their most devastating impact,
however, is their toll on lives and the instant poverty they create. The effect of natural
hazards on the loss of human lives is directly related to the poverty levels in a given
country. National and regional efforts for natural disaster reduction should therefore be
closely linked with poverty alleviation and economic and social development activities.

Losses resulting from natural disasters are particularly damaging in the Asian and
Pacific region, depriving countries of resources which could otherwise be used for
economic and social development. The toll is most severe and tragic in the least
developed and developing countries of the region, which have sometimes had their
development goals, set back years and even decades as a consequence of major
disasters. Regional cooperation for disaster management, including infrastructure
development, is essential, not only to cope with the impacts but also to help ensure that
the region sustains its economic growth.

CAUSES OF NATURAL DISASTERS

Recent surveys shown that Asia and the Pacific is one of the regions of the world most
vulnerable to disasters, experiencing a wide variety of natural hazards that include
floods, cyclones, earthquakes, drought, tornadoes, debris flows, hailstorms, storm
surges, tsunamis and haze. Urban flooding has become a major potential hazard in
terms of its economic and social impact as a result of the rapid urbanization process
and uncoordinated infrastructure development. Coastal flooding and storm surges have
the potential to cause substantial loss of life and property damage in large and heavily
populated deltaic areas, such as those of Bangladesh and Viet Nam, and tsunamis
generated by underwater earthquakes can also be very destructive, as experienced in
December 2004 in the Indian Ocean and South-East Asia.

Cyclone-related disasters were rated as the most severe in many survey responses.
Ranked in order of severity, they included

• Floods,
• Strong winds,
• Landslides, including mudslides, and
• Storm surges.

Floods were also the most common disaster experienced in almost all countries in the
region. Rapid population growth in Asian and Pacific countries is driving people, mostly
the poor, to settle in squatter areas in large cities, usually inhabiting low-lying flood-
prone areas, unstable hillsides or other disaster-prone marginal locations owing to the
high cost of suitable alternatives and the extremely high cost of new infrastructure and
services. In Bangladesh, for example, over a million people are living on islands formed
by silt deposits and in vulnerable flood plains and coastal areas. Over 85 per cent of the
population of China lives on alluvial plains or along river basins concentrated in one
third of the country’s total land area. The situation is similar in Viet Nam, where the
dykes providing protection along rivers are sometimes breached by flood waters,
causing extensive inundation. In consequence, the number of persons vulnerable to
natural hazards is increasing rapidly. Environmental degradation taking place in many
countries of the region only intensifies the damage inflicted by natural disasters.
Deforestation, erosion, overgrazing, over cultivation and incorrect agricultural practices
and the degradation of natural buffers amplify the effects of natural hazards. Land
degradation and desertification pose a serious threat in the region in the wake of
growing populations and enhanced food demand. Indeed, a comparison of
desertification in different continents indicates that the Asian and Pacific region is most
severely affected by loss of land productivity and agricultural output, although Africa has
the highest percentage of decertified dry land.

PATTERNS OF NATURAL DISASTERS

According to various surveys, natural disasters had the most impact at the local level,
followed by the regional and national levels. Impacts of floods are particularly significant
at the regional and national levels. These surveys confirmed the analysis of the impacts
of natural disasters in the region during the period from 1950 to 2005, based on the
OFDA/CRED International Disaster Database, which showed that cyclone-related
disasters (wind-storms and floods) accounted for most of the loss of life and economic
damage (54 per cent of deaths and 57 per cent of economic damage).

However, the pattern of death and damage has changed substantially. Over the past 50
years, about 100,000 people have died annually as a result of natural disasters, and the
related damage has amounted to $10.6 billion.

NEED FOR DISASTER MANAGEMENT

Local authorities are responsible for the proper management of the area under their
jurisdiction, and the well being of the citizens, which includes an optimal protection
against disasters. It is not acceptable anymore to have a response-oriented attitude,
and concentrate only on the organization of disaster relief. Disaster prevention and
preparedness are equally important component of a proper disaster management, in
order to reduce the urban vulnerability.

Disaster management can be separated in several pre- and post-disaster phase. Pre-
disaster phases are risk identification, in which various types of risk are assessed in
order to be able to carry out appropriate mitigation measures to reduce the risk,
transferring of risk using financial means and all aspects leading to a better
preparedness to predict and cope with the occurrence of hazardous events. Post
disaster phases consist of disaster relief, rehabilitation and reconstruction.
Unfortunately, until recently most of the emphasis has been on the post-disaster
phases, and most disaster management organizations in developing countries have
been established only for this purpose. Recently, the emphasis is being changed to
disaster mitigation, and especially to vulnerability reduction.

A considerable percentage of municipalities in India don’t have an adequate risk

assessment and an emergency plan. In developing countries, the levels of risk are
higher due to higher levels of vulnerability. This larger risk in cities in developing
countries is due to a number of factors, such as

• Increased vulnerability of low level neighborhoods (both in terms of its buildings

and its inhabitants)
• Lack of resources for proper planning
• Lack of spatial information in order to make the right decisions. Even if such
spatial information is available, it may be dispersed through different local
authorities, without an operational procedure for information sharing.

In order to be able to effectively take measures on risk reduction local authorities must
be supplied with reliable, up-to-date, and interpreted information on the nature and
geographical distribution of hazard and risk, and the possible risk scenario's. Risk
assessment is considered as the central and most important aspect within disaster
management.

THE RELEVANCE OF TOWN PLANNING TOOLS IN DISASTER RISK REDUCTION

Human settlements are dynamic. They operate like living organizations. They have
origin, growth, decay and re-growth. Cities and towns like any human settlement are
subject to various types of forces, physical, economic, social and administrative which
influence their forms and structures. For instance, disaster of any nature whether
natural or man-made could exert so much force so as to disrupt the socio-economic and
political balance of the settlement; cause property damage and loss of human life. The
application of town planning tools such as contained in the building regulations and sub-
division bye-laws of the local government could help to coordinate the various forces
and consequently ensure a disaster free environment. Therefore, the application of
town planning principle and indeed the town planning tools in pre-event planning could
be seen as a future oriented problem solving strategy which recognizes the relationship
between planning, preparedness, response and recovery. In summary, the relevance
of Town Planning in disaster risk reduction is that it allows for a futuristic mental
projection of potential disaster and then allows us to formulate how we can
mitigate it before it occurs.