SINGAPORE, June 2, 2014 /PRNewswire/ -- WORLD CITIES SUMMIT -- In light of the growing threat of disasters from natural hazards such as floods, storms, fires and earthquakes, one growing city is taking the lead in piloting a new tool to assess how prepared cities of all sizes will be when disaster strikes.

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Coimbatore, India, is the first city to apply a new United Nations' Office for Disaster Risk Reduction (UNISDR) scorecard which was developed jointly by IBM (NYSE: IBM) and AECOM, the companies announced today at the World Cities Summit in Singapore.

The direct cost of natural hazards in the 21(st) century is already $2.5 trillion, at least 50 percent greater than previous estimates, according to the United Nations. The average estimated loss from earthquakes, tornadoes and cyclones alone are $180 billion each year. The scorecard will help Coimbatore and other cities improve preparedness and resilience to disasters by reviewing policy and planning, engineering, informational, organizational, financial, social and environmental aspects of disaster resilience in 80 assessment categories.

According to UNISDR head, Margareta Wahlstrom, "More than half the world's population lives in urban centers. Cities are expanding rapidly and this presents an opportunity to both address existing risk and avoid the accumulation of new risks. Good urban planning is at the heart of building resilience to disasters and it will be interesting to see the results of this pioneering trial of the Disaster Resilience Scorecard which is designed to help cities establish a baseline measurement of their current level of disaster resilience, identify priorities for investment and action and track progress over time."

Coimbatore is a thriving industrial hub with a population of more than 1.5 million people located in Southern India. In a moderate to high seismic zone, Coimbatore needs to build energy and power resiliency, better water quality management for drinking and industrial uses, improved ecology, reduced environmental degradation, as well as significantly improved traffic infrastructure. According to Mayor S. M. Velusamy, "Working together for resiliency, we will create a sea change for Coimbatore."

AECOM and IBM detailed the United Nation's Ten Essentials for Making Cities Resilient to create a tool that enables cities to prioritize needs, track and measure the progress cities make, and identify major areas of weakness--before a natural disaster identifies these for them. The tool, in the public domain, will strengthen the understanding of what it will require to protect lives, livelihoods and facilitate a more rapid economic recovery of a more urbanized world.

Dr. Peter Williams, chief technology officer, Big Green Innovations at IBM, and AECOM's Michael Nolan, global technical director climate adaptation, are discussing Environmental Resilience and Strengthening the Building Blocks of a City at the World Cities Summit conference session on Building Resilient Cities (Sands Expo & Convention Center, Marina Bay Sands, Singapore, June 3, 2014 at 2:30 - 4:00 pm).

IBM and AECOM are part of UNISDR's Private Sector Advisory Group and the Making Cities Resilient Steering Committee. The resiliency scorecard can be downloaded at UNISDR site.

About AECOM
AECOM is a global provider of professional technical and management support services to a broad range of markets, including transportation, facilities, environmental, energy, water and government. With approximately 45,000 employees around the world, AECOM blends global reach, local knowledge, innovation and technical excellence in delivering solutions that create, enhance and sustain the world's built, natural, and social environments. A Fortune 500 company, AECOM serves clients in more than 150 countries and had revenue of $8.0 billion during the 12 months ended March 31, 2014.
For more information on AECOM, please visit www.aecom.com.

About IBM
IBM has deep expertise in working with cities of all sizes, helping solve their toughest challenges. By bringing together big data, analytics, cloud, mobile and social computing, IBM his helping cities realize the potential to build more sustainable, resilient cities that are focused on the needs of citizens.

For more information on IBM Smarter Cities, visit www.ibm.com/press/smartercities.

To join the conversation about IBM Smarter Cities please follow @IBMSmartCities on Twitter as well as the hashtag #SmarterCities

Contacts
Denis McClean
United Nations
Mccleand@un.org
+41 79 444 5262

John Petraglia
AECOM
+1 510 879 4538
john.petraglia@aecom.com

Alexander Aizenberg
IBM
+1 908 723 4807
aizenberg@us.ibm.com

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SOURCE IBM