Most refugees and internally displaced people gravitate to highly populated cities, creating unique threats and vulnerabilities. The result is that urban areas are increasingly the site of humanitarian crises exacerbated by natural hazards, violence, and armed conflict. Response frameworks for rural challenges translate poorly into urban contexts and so the humanitarian community is now adapting their response mechanisms to create more contextual responses forsome of the world’s most pressing needs. Accordingly, the German Red Cross (GRC) needed to bolster their understanding of the complexities of urban crises and specific requirements for response including processes, socio-cultural considerations, legal requirements, and the structural frameworks needed to inform priorities of the GRC in an urban context. GRC was searching for a well-structured, comprehensive, and adequately categorized information repository.
DFS structured existing reports for GRC and provided secondary data tagging and analysis in its Urban Response Analytical Framework. The partnership categorized information from multiple documents and sources, informing GRC’s implementation/testing of innovative approaches to urban knowledge management amid conflict and non-conflict urban situations. The project also tested the appropriateness and practicability of GRC’s urban framework for managing large amounts of data. Training and reference materials grew out of the project in an effort to standardize definitions, instructions, and examples for each pillar and sub-pillar of the GRC urban framework. This will allow for smooth updates of the project in the future.
