Enhancing Resilience of London by Learning from Experiences
Abstract
The concept of resilience was introduced at the beginning of the 70s to indicate the capability of natural systems to absorb perturbations, preserving their structure and keeping the system functioning. The paper considers London as an example to a resilient city by focusing on some remarkable disasters in the history of London, such as the Great Fire of 1666, the air raids during the World War 2, 18 December 1987 Kings Cross Fire, terrorist attack to tube network on the 7th of July 2005, 1928 flooding and 1953 storm surge. The paper starts by giving short descriptions of these disasters and continues by discussing the lessons learned. In this paper, the concept of resilience has been studied in three phases: prepare for, respond to and recover from a disaster. Besides, actions that have to be taken according to these three phases are going to be explored in detail. In conclusion, the notable effects of the mentioned disasters on the structural and non-structural tools for disaster prevention have been revealed by considering resilience of London.
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References
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