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The Urban 2.0 Diagnostics Tool
A diagnostics tool based on the Urban 2.0 system
The Urban 2.0 Diagnostics Profile, which is owned by the Principal Consultant of Risk Insight Consulting, is a tool that provides a holistic view of a city or town as it is today, and how you would like it to be in future. It allows you to look at any urban environment with systems thinking (the Urban 2.0 system), and to document actions against your analysis to agree how to move from a current state to a desired future state. It can map your current state and (if you want to add it) your future state responses to the SDGs and their supporting SDG global indicators.
The approach to using the tool, and the depth of questions, is based on the following premise:
- Help people assess urban environments from an administration view, a citizens view, a business view and an observer view (such as think tanks, philanthropic organisations, academics, charities, etc).
- Provide ideas to improve how parts of the urban system work.
- Provide analysis and feedback of assessments, including possible benchmarking, and contribute towards a practical city / town vision and roadmap.
The tool can be used in its entirety or in parts - whatever works best for the context of the people who are using it.
The tool can provide the following benefits to a city / town:
- Help identify areas of improvement in your urban environment and help you achieve your objectives.
- From identifying areas of improvement, drill into more detail in certain areas to agree how to improve things.
- Provide advice that can be used when creating or updating urban environment plans, policies and/or procedures.
- Provide ideas and suggestions for people's training and skills development, as part of continuous improvement.
- Provide specific guidance, if relevant, on how a city / town is working towards the SDGs and also Sendai Framework (disaster risk) targets.
Contact us to discuss the Urban 2.0 Diagnostics tool.
Urban 2.0 Risk and Resilience tools
A range of risk and resilience tools are included in the Urban 2.0 Toolkit, including the following:
Risk & Vulnerability Assessments
Risk & Vulnerability Assessments (R&VAs) are a good way to understand risks that exist in an urban area and surrounding areas. Various examples of R&VAs exist from organisations. The Urban 2.0 R&VA focuses on risks and vulnerabilities that are organised using the Urban 2.0 system.
The Urban 2.0 R&VA can be used in conjunction with the Urban 2.0 diagnostics assessment, if appropriate.
A Risk Register
A good risk register is a valuable tool to capture all risks relating to a particular need / set of objectives. A risk register can cover the entire range of risks for a city or town, or it can focus on a specific subset (and be linked to a parent-level register if so).
The Bowtie
Bowties are a good visual way to understand and to "unpack" a specific risk in detail and to assess controls required to manage it. They are widely used in some business industry sectors.
The bowtie describes the causes of a risk on the left-hand side, and the "proactive controls" to prevent the risk from happening (assuming it is a negative risk). On the right-hand side are the consequences of the risk if it occurs, and controls required to stop it getting bad or worse if it does occur (assuming it is a negative risk).
Bowties can be done in a fast-paced, 15-minute style or they can be developed in fine-level detail. How they are used depends on the situation.
Decision Trees
Decision Trees can be used in various ways to analyse and agree a way forward for complex decisions. It is a decision-making tool to help us understand in a visual way the choices available to achieve our objectives. With its focus on understanding how events can cause a change of direction, it can help prepare us for “forks in the road”. A Decision Tree helps us to recognise the uncertainty we face. We can’t predict or control the future, but we can control how we feel about events that could occur. Picturing these possibilities can help us assess our degree of comfort in different outcomes occurring.
Scenario Analysis
Scenario analysis challenges us to look beyond the obvious, to be ready to respond to changes that can occur to how we achieve our objectives.
Scenario analysis focuses on discussing our key objectives and factors that influence how they may be achieved. It is about asking ”What if?” things change. A good scenario analysis results in an awareness about how our targets could be affected by change.
Scenario analysis isn’t a tool to think through everything that could happen – too many things are beyond our control to achieve that. Whilst we cannot predict the future, scenarios help us develop perspectives that test our assumptions on whether our plans and targets remain feasible, and how to anticipate and spot the winds of change early, to keep ourselves “on track”.
Counterfactual analysis
Counterfactual analysis helps us to look at risks and events that have occurred in a way that asks what if the situation had been different? They help us to consider how well our governance and control environment is working.
Hackathons
Hackathons are fast-paced and energetic training situations, in which a large group of people is split up into several teams that are assigned to work through a series of linked challenges. When they are prepared properly they can help teams to work through a range of real-life problems, risks, issues and challenges, taking into account a broad range of views and perspectives.
Urban dashboard ideas
Urban dashboards are in use by municipal authorities around the world, in various ways and to serve various purposes. They are discussed in the Urban 2.0 book, and examples are available to review.
Our modern governance of cities and towns requires us to consider ecological, physical and socio-economic aspects (in line with the urban system) to inform our decision-making, planning and design processes. The sites and systems where we locate city and town informational functions — the places where we see information-processing, storage, and transmission “happening” in the urban landscape — shape a broader understanding of urban development and change.
The Urban 2.0 app concept (mock-up)
The Urban 2.0 app concept has been developed as a mock-up (it is not currently a functioning app) to explore how an app could connect people together and inspire people around the world in all walks of life to act and work together to make cities and towns thriving, greener and more resilient.
The Urban 2.0 app mock-up design focuses on three things:
1. Ways for people find out things about their local area and elsewhere around the world
2. Ways to take part in improving urban environments
3. Ways for those who oversee urban environments to improve their engagement with people
Urban Indicators (linked to the SDGs)
A proposed new set of indicators to support the SDGs
The 17 SDGs were launched in 2015 and are designed to run until 2030 - at which time they should be replaced by a new set of goals, just as the SDGs replaced the eight Millennium Development Goals which were used from 2000 to 2015. The SDGs are supported by a set of 231 unique Indicators, which provide indicators that are typically written for a national level of tracking and review.
The SDG global indicators are designed to work at a national level. Applying them to the level of a city or town is tricky, because they do not (by design) cover specific aspects of how urban environments work. A set of urban indicators have been created as part of the Urban 2.0 framework of tools, which are envisaged to be used and to exist underneath (and therefore be tied to) the SDG global indicators and the overall SDGs.
We can benefit from linked detailed metrics, and a way of tracking them in an efficient way
The Urban 2.0 urban indicators have been developed partly to connect to the SDG global indicators. The Urban 2.0 urban indicators link to the SDG global indicators for activities that directly take place at a city or a town, or part of a municipality.
The indicators used in Urban 2.0 are a combination of "lag" (backwards looking) and "lead" (forwards looking) indicators. Lead indicators are important to spot potential problems early and deal with them before they become bigger.
It is important to emphasise that whilst there are approx. 260 urban indicators in Urban 2.0, they have been designed so that they are not a burden on busy teams. The following points apply to their use:
- Existing data from various sources should be tapped into and used to monitor urban performance against the indicators, thus saving valuable time and money to collect data.
- Their use should be stitched into business as usual, with no burden on reporting.
- They number to be monitored should match the capacity of the team in charge of the activity. If appropriate, the urban indicators can be measured in a limited way to start with, and more can be tracked over time.
The urban indicators could be audited and benchmarked against and also linked to an urban diagnostic, if such an approach is being used to understand the current state and future needs of one or more cities and towns.
As is typical for metrics measurement and reporting, it is suggested that independent assurance could add value by verifying the quality of tracking against the urban indicators.
It is hoped that the urban indicators could be relevant to (and perhaps adapted for) the new set of goals that are foreseen to be launched in 2030, the year that the SDGs will be updated/replaced.
More information about the urban indicators is available on request.
