Category: COVID-19

The importance of disaster preparedness in cities and municipalities – experiences and lessons learned

Posted on by erik

The event series “Insight Sessions: Post-COVID Urban Futures” is part of this year’s Connective Cities Corona programme and facilitates a regular, open exchange on relevant topics of the post-COVID-19 era for municipal practitioners and relevant experts worldwide. Different topics of sustainable urban development during and after the COVID-19 pandemic will be discussed and innovative approaches in this regard will be shared in brief and concise virtual exchange formats. The aim of these events is to provide impulses that encourage participants to reflect on their progress so far and think about innovative solutions. The open discussion rounds will take place on Wednesdays once every three weeks. 

We are pleased to invite you to the third event in the series on „The importance of disaster preparedness in cities and municipalities: experiences and lessons learned“ on Wednesday August 25th, 2021 from 10:00 – 11:30 CEST.

European cities have experienced flooding many times in history, however, the scale and numbers of losses of life from the flooding in July 2021 have been devastating. Hitting the long safely imagined temperate zone, the events reveal the importance and urgency of discussing measures to enhance disaster preparedness and strengthen resilience in cities around the globe. The need of cities worldwide to adapt to a changing climate and an increasing number of extreme weather events is more prominent than ever to save lives, reduce economic losses and protect critical infrastructure.

In this session we will reflect on the experienced challenges and lessons learned from devastating flood events around the globe and discuss how we can better prepare for extreme weather events, improve multi-hazard early warning systems and strengthen public awareness of disaster risks with urban practitioners and experts from the field.

A detailed agenda will be provided shortly. The event will take place virtually in the Connective Cities Community.

Date: Wednesday, August 25th

Time: 10:00-11:30 CEST

Event language: English (translation tba)

If you have any further questions, please do not hesitate to contact us.

Contact: paulina.koschmieder@giz.de

Digital literacy and digital municipal service design in Post-COVID-19 Cities

Posted on by erik

The event series “Insight Sessions: Post-COVID Urban Futures” is part of this year’s Connective Cities Corona programme and facilitates a regular, open exchange on relevant topics of the post-COVID-19 era for municipal practitioners and relevant experts worldwide. Different topics of sustainable urban development during and after the COVID-19 pandemic will be discussed and innovative approaches in this regard will be shared in brief and concise virtual exchange formats. The aim of these events is to provide impulses that encourage participants to reflect on their progress so far and think about innovative solutions. The open discussion rounds will take place on Wednesdays once every three weeks. 

We are pleased to invite you to the second event in the series on “Digital literacy and digital municipal service design in Post-COVID-19 Cities” on Wednesday August 18, 2021 from 10:00 – 11:30 CEST.

The COVID-19 pandemic accelerated the digital transformation of public services. With the establishment of pandemic response measurements like contact tracking or remote work there was the sudden need for the immediate digital implementation of municipal services.  Now that we are living with the pandemic for more than one year, the new digital reality has become the new normality for many, but not for all of us. 

Through the rapid digitalisation process many have been left out who either are missing in digital literacy or don´t have the access to technology to participate. This problem is especially relevant for municipalities as they have the responsibility to include all citizens in their activities and allow them to participate in the society. The (new?) digital divide becomes apparent in the fields of education, communication and many more.  In this session, we will exchange on and discuss the challenges municipalities are facing to overcome the digital divide while still enhancing their digital services and good examples in that regard.

A detailed agenda will be provided shortly. The event will take place virtually in the Connective Cities Community:

Insight Session: Digital literacy and digital municipal service design | Connective Cities Network (connective-cities.net)

Date: Wednesday, 18.08.2021

Time: 10:00-11:30 CEST

Event language: English (translation tba)

If you have any further questions, please do not hesitate to contact us.

Contact: paulina.koschmieder@giz.de

Research of good practices on the subject of health, business, and governance at municipal level during the COVID-19 pandemic

Posted on by erik

The report aims to explore municipal initiatives and measures taken to address health, governance, and business sector challenges caused by the COVID-19 pandemic.
The report is structured as follows:
The first part reviews the methodology of country identification for further investigation of good practices at national and city level.
The second, third, and fourth parts consist of good practices in the areas of health, governance, and business during the COVID-19 pandemic, including data analysis in selected countries and a brief overview of municipal practices in response to COVID-19. Good practices were selected from low and medium income countries from Africa, Asia and Southeast Europe.
In the final section, the cities’ challenges and recommendations for Connective Cities are reviewed and conclusions regarding the research findings are also presented.

Connective Cities’ COVID-19 programme 2021

Posted on by erik

After last year’s Connective Cities event series “Municipal Response to COVID-19”, which was well received by over 750 participants from different cities and municipalities around the world, Connective Cities is again offering a comprehensive programme on COVID-19 this year. Last year, the programme focused on sharing experiences of immediate municipal measures during the pandemic – this year, the perspective will be broadened to include municipal recovery from the pandemic, also in the context of the 2030 Agenda. Instead of pure exchange formats, the second part of the Corona programme will derive proven methods from Connective Cities as well as use new approaches to promote a deeper municipal exchange of experiences. In this sense, it is planned that municipal practitioners jointly address current COVID-19-related topics in compact learning processes. The aim here is the (further) development of (project) initiatives and guidelines for municipal challenges as well as the elaboration and dissemination of existing approaches to solutions. Building on the previous momentum, challenges related to COVID-19 can thus be dealt with in greater depth and in a practical manner.

Aspects already addressed in the previous year will thus be further developed. Connective Cities will focus on the following topics in this year’s COVID-19 programme:  

  • Local economy & industry   
  • Digitalisation & communication  
  • Public health & public services
  • Crisis management 
  • Climate neutral urban development
  • Gender sensitivity in the pandemic
  • Innovation

For more information on our COVID-19 activities this year, watch our information video and visit our
COVID-19 webpage.

Municipal response to COVID-19 in the health sector

Posted on by erik

Focusing on exploring tools and protocols that cities have been employing to control and monitor the spread of infection and reviewing the efficiency and effectiveness of such tools and protocols.

More: https://youtu.be/iy9Zb3HL2GQ

More good practices, articles, videos, podcasts and interviews on our COVID-19 page.

Insight Sessions: Post-COVID Urban Futures

Posted on by erik

The new event series “Insight Sessions: Post-COVID Urban Futures” is part of this year’s Connective Cities Corona programme and facilitates a regular, open exchange on relevant topics of the post-COVID-19 era for municipal practitioners and relevant experts worldwide. Different topics of sustainable urban development during and after the COVID-19 pandemic will be discussed and innovative approaches in this regard will be shared in brief and concise virtual exchange formats. The aim of these events is to provide impulses that encourage participants to reflect on their progress so far and think about innovative solutions. The open discussion rounds will take place on Wednesdays once every three weeks. 

We are pleased to invite you to the opening event and first discussion of the Insight Sessions series focusing on the topic “COVID-19 Recovery & SDG 11” on Wednesday, 28 July 2021, from 10:00 to 11:45 a.m. CEST. 

The opening event will start with a brief introduction to this year’s Connective Cities Corona programme. Subsequently, a panel discussion will explore the challenges and opportunities of the COVID-19 crisis for achieving SDG 11 towards making cities more inclusive, safe, resilient and sustainable. During this panel discussion, municipal practitioners and experts from different urban sectors and world regions will share their diverse perspectives and insights on this topic. The panelists (tbc) are:

  • Faola Hodaj, Director of Innovation, Municipality of Tirana, Albania
  • Karim Elgendy, Sustainable City Strategist, London UK / MENA – Recipient of the 2013 Global Green Building Entrepreneurship Award by the World Green Building Council
  • Aditya Kumar, Executive Director, NGO Development Action Group, Cape Town, South Africa
  • Hilmar von Lojewski, Councillor for Urban Planning, Building, Housing and Traffic, Association of German Cities / Cologne, Germany

 A detailed agenda of the opening event can be found here. The preliminary schedule of the series of Insight Sessions will be shared soon.  The event will take place virtually in the Connective Cities Community: 

Insight Session: COVID-19 Recovery and SDG 11 | Connective Cities Network (connective-cities.net)

Date: Wednesday, the 28th of July 2021

Time: 10:00 – 11:45 a.m. CEST 

Event language: English. Translation available in: Russian, French, Arabic. 

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If you have any further questions, please do not hesitate to contact us:

Contact: paulina.koschmieder@giz.de

Successful pandemic response in the slums of Lusaka, Zambia

Posted on by erik

Lusaka, the capital of Zambia, is growing rapidly. Within the last 20 years the number of inhabitants has risen from one million to over three million in 2020. The city’s formal housing could not be expanded fast enough, which is why especially the slums experience fast growth. Today around 70 percent of the city’s population is living in slums. 

In Zambia, COVID-19 primarily affects densely populated areas and especially the capital city of Lusaka, where more than half of the country’s recorded corona infections have been counted.

Lusaka’s slum dwellers are particularly vulnerable to the effects of the pandemic due to a high population density and an often insecure employment situation. In particular, the unemployment caused by Corona measures and the subsequent inability to pay has multiple broader consequences for slum dwellers, including: 

  • Food insecurity
  • Threats of eviction and forced evictions by landlords
  • Inability to pay for water supply and land rent to the city council. 

The Lusaka City Council took broad measures to address this. For example, land rents owed to the city council were reduced by 50 percent and fees for legalizing land ownership were sharply reduced. This relieved the burden on landowners and landlords, who were thus able to partially forgo rental income and refrain from evicting residents.  

Also, water access was no longer cut due to lack of payment, as water is particularly crucial for hygiene and thus for pandemic control.

In addition, food was distributed, and digital aid was disbursed to combat the acute effects of the pandemic. Decentralization helped to avoid crowded distribution points. High-traffic locations such as markets are regularly being disinfected so that the population can work and shop there with minimized risk. 

It became apparent that a multi-sectoral approach and the involvement of various stakeholders and local community leaders was necessary to pool resources and avoid duplication of effort

Further information

Urbanisation and proliferation of informal settlements in Lusaka, Zambia (PDF)

Recording of Event (Presentation on Lusaka starts min. 18): Urban Poverty and Living Conditions: Limiting COVID-19 Impacts in Densely Populated Backyard Rental Areas (only for those registered on the Connective Cities Platform) 

Contact

Danny Chibinda
Director of Housing and Social Services
Lusaka City Council, Zambia
info@lcc.gov.zm

Fangcang Shelter Hospitals in Wuhan, China

Posted on by erik

Like many other cities, the city of Wuhan, China, often referred to as the epicenter of the pandemic, faced severe challenges when being confronted with the outbreak of the virus at the end of 2019 and early 2020. A lack of medical supplies, doctors and nurses, and available beds made it impossible to contain the pandemic in its early stages by the means of traditional hospitals. To isolate COVID-19 cases from the rest of the population quickly and on a large scale, the city of Wuhan developed a novel concept in public health: Fangcang Shelter Hospitals.

During the outbreak of the pandemic in Wuhan, public facilities such as gymnasiums or stadiums were rapidly transformed into health facilities. Within ten days, these new medical shelter hospitals provided the basic functions of isolation, primary health care, disease surveillance and rapid referral, as well as food and shelter. Especially mild and moderate COVID-19 cases were treated and isolated quickly in these shelter hospitals, while severe cases were transported to traditional hospitals. This triage led to an enormous relief of the traditional hospitals and enabled the treatment and isolation of large numbers of patients.

Further, within the new health facilities, medical teams of different disciplines constantly generated new knowledge about the diagnostic and treatment options for COVID-19. These were permanently updated with the help of multidisciplinary collaborations and helped to inform other practitioners in the health sector on the city, national and international level. Through an innovative cloud-based medical service solution, hospitals were further able to provide online health advice.

A total of 16 such shelter hospitals enabled the isolation of thousands of patients within a very short time during the COVID-19 outbreak in Wuhan. They provided medical treatment and care and fulfilled an important function to relieve the burden on traditional hospitals and to efficiently avoid the spread of the disease. For the future post-epidemic era, psychological counselling of medical staff now plays an equally important role as follow-up research, evaluation and adjustment of processes in the shelter hospitals, so that Wuhan will be even better prepared for challenges to its health system in the future.

Further Information

How do we challenge the Covid-19? – Jun Wang [pdf 2,24 mb]

Event Recording in English and Chinese (Presentation on Wuhan starts min. 6): https://conference.meet-modular.com/playback/presentation/2.0/playback.html?meetingId=ffacab8b40bcf33de7da48374038a61adb2d30df-1606200349228

Contact

Dr. Wang Jun,
Tongji Medical College of Huazhong University of Science and Technology in Wuhan,
Huabei Province, P.R. of China
brendawj2006@163.com

Pandemic response in Aracaju, Brazil

Posted on by erik

Brazil is one of the countries most affected by the pandemic worldwide. Aracaju, the capital of the state of Sergipe in north-eastern Brazil, responded quickly and comprehensively to Covid-19.

In March 2020, a response plan was developed, and a crisis team was established. This meant that even before the first cases appeared in the region, people with symptoms could be isolated, tested and followed up. Random testing of citizens, for example, in public places, markets and train stations, was also very successful. Through this strategy, around 3,600 PCR tests and 1,200 rapid tests were conducted weekly in all 44 neighbourhoods of Aracaju. Testing allowed a-symptomatic cases to be detected and isolated. In addition, the protection of at-risk groups was vital for the Brazilian city. Therefore, they were tested especially frequently and at home. The prevention measures also included registering travellers at the airport.

In March 2020, the Aracaju city government set up eight medical centres, of which around 130,000 patients were cared for by October 2020. Furthermore, hospitals were equipped with respirators and beds were increased. The field hospital opened in May 2020 treated more than 450 patients. Thanks to these measures, the city’s health system was relieved.

Crisis communication was another key component in the strategic management of the pandemic in Aracaju. The citizens were informed about infection numbers in a daily briefing. Another concern of the city was to support the citizens emotionally. Therefore, Aracaju offered psychological counselling by telephone, an offer that was taken up more than 4000 times. Thanks to these comprehensive measures, Aracaju has recorded one of the lowest mortality rates in Brazil concerning Covid-19.

Further Information

Gestão Estratégica e medidas inovadoras no enfrentamento à pandemia em Aracaju/SE  –  Präsentation in Portugiesisch [PDF, 1,96 mb]

Event Recording in German, Spanish, and Portugiese (Presentation on Aracaju starts min. 73): Strategisches management zur Bekämpfung der Pandemie in Aracaju (Only for those registered on the Connective Cities Platform)

Contact

Frau Waneskade Souza Barboza,
Representative of the National Front of Mayors (FNP)
Secretary of Health of Aracaju Prefeitura Municipal de Aracaju, Aracaju, Brazil
waneska.barboza@aracaju.se.gov.br

Municipal Response to COVID-19 in Business Sector

Posted on by erik

On 27th of May virtual workshop on Municipal Response to COVID-19 in Business Sector took place as part of the ongoing Event series “Municipal Response to COVID-19”.  It is commissioned by the GIZ project “Connective Cities – The Community of Practice for Sustainable Urban Development”.

The Workshop was dedicated to exploring municipal initiatives and measures taken to address economic and business sector challenges caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. Its aim was to review how municipalities have managed to support vulnerable businesses during this period. Moreover, the web-seminar explored innovative private-sector support schemes responding to COVID-19, outlined the actions and strategies deployed by cities to communicate with the private sector, and highlighted the importance of business recovery plans.

Approximately 40 participants from Armenia, Azerbaijan, Moldova, Georgia, Germany, Peru and South Africa took part in the workshop.

Program

This virtual event was opened by welcoming remarks made by Dr. Piotr Żuber. Dr. Żuber provided background information of the workshop and briefly overviewed the agenda. Following the introduction, Mr. Irakli Samkharadze, Regional Coordinator, Connective Cities, GIZ, thanked all attendees for their participation and briefly introduced Connective Cities project and its objectives.

Core part of the workshop was structured according to themes and went as follows:

  1. Presentation of the best practices in terms of innovative business approaches and business recovery plans in response to the COVID-19 crisis among Connective Cities network members.
  2. Detailed cases of municipal responses to COVID-19 in the business sector from Lima (Peru) presented by Ms. Patricia Talavera, Head of Economic Development Department at Lima
  3. Cases of Cape Town (South Africa) presented by Mr. Lance Greyling, City of Cape Town’s Director for Enterprise and Investment.
  4. Q&A session following themes of presentations, during which participants actively discussed their experiences and aspects that could be useful from introduced cases.
  5. Interactive discussion panel focusing on the effectiveness of business recovery plans at municipal level during the COVID-19 pandemic. The participants reviewed the role of business recovery plans at the local level and how these can ensure smoother and faster recovery in the post-pandemic era. The discussion was moderated by Dr. Giorgi Khishtovani, and panel participants were Dr. Piotr Zuber, Senior Lecturer at University of Warsaw (Poland), and Mr. Vakhtang Lomjaria, Head of Municipal Department of Economic Development, Tbilisi (Georgia).

Presentations

The main measures for Economic Reactivation
Ms. Patricia Talavera, Head of Economic Development Department, Lima, Peru

Enterprise & Investment, Support for SMME’s during COVID -19
Mr. Lance Greyling, City of Cape Town’s Director for Enterprise and Investment, Cape Town, South Africa

Methodology and Results of the Research on Covid-19 Responses
Mr. Giorgi Khishtovani, Research Director, PMCG

Results

During this online workshop representatives from multitudes of municipalities exchanged their experiences and insights on business recovery possibilities.

Participants were introduced to various already implemented recovery plans or activities from around the world. They were also given insight into some of future business recuperation possibilities and trends from around the world.  One such example, in particular plan for business support in Tbilisi, Georgia was delivered by the governmental body representative himself