Chapter 3. Bandung, Indonesia

Vulnerability and risk assessment

One of the basic building blocks of resilience enhancement in any city is to undertake a vulnerability and risk assessment (VRA) and asset inventory. The fundamental steps and processes involved are only just beginning in Bandung now. The VRA mapping exercise that city officials and community representatives conducted with assistance from USAID in 2015 represents one of several methodologies that have been developed by various multi-lateral development banks and international organisations (Box 3.1).

Zoning regulations and building codes

Buildings and the housing stock in cities are among the greatest causes of death and destruction in most disasters. When buildings or homes collapse in earthquakes, floods, mudslides or landslides, they injure or kill many people. Collapsed buildings have accounted for nearly two-thirds of all natural disaster fatalities since 1980 (Munich RE, 2015). In Bandung however, people have been allowed to settle and build in flood-prone areas and this development is actually increasing the city’s exposure to further flooding risks (Tarigan, et al., 2016). At a national level, it is estimated by the Ministry of Public Works that in excess of 25 million people already live in highly exposed settlements in rapidly growing and unprepared urban slums (Give2Asia, 2016). Their vulnerability is more attributable to poorly enforced zoning regulations and land use controls than it is to topography or hydrology. Bandung should critically strengthen its enforcement of zoning regulations and building codes to minimise damages and losses from flooding or landslides caused by periodically intense tropical rainstorms.

Bandung could facilitate efforts to convert these areas into attractive and widely used public spaces to prevent re-settlement by squatters or from being used illegally to dump wastes. The Citarum River, which runs through the heart of Bandung, is heavily polluted by human and toxic wastes containing lead, mercury, arsenic and other toxins (Box 3.2). They are dumped into the river without treatment from more than 2,000 industries and textile factories located in Bandung and Cimahi (ADB, 2007).

Co-benefit DRM approach

Bandung has begun to pursue integrated, cross-sectoral planning in at least two critically important areas: (i) land-use spatial planning efforts to create new development projects as self-contained, multi-purpose areas where people can ‘work, live, and play’ in safer, less crowded areas, and (ii) by connecting them to other areas using high-quality public transportation modes. This type of transit oriented development (TOD) which promotes interconnected nodes could also incorporate other DRM strategies by making greater use of renewable energy sources, land and water resources, and more energy efficient buildings, cars, and factories.

This assessment found that poor solid waste management is one of the critical issues undermining DRM in Bandung. Bandung requires an improvement to solid waste collection systems and public health awareness-building campaigns in order to reduce the amount of garbage illegally dumped into local streams and drainage canals. The use of ICT should be pursued to enhance solid waste management. For instance, Bandung could create a special smartphone application to report uncollected solid waste in the city so that citizens can alert a special waste management unit of the City of Bandung. The Bandung Command Centre has the capacity to easily collect such input from citizens since it already communicates with them through Twitter. In parallel, awareness programs would need to be launched by the city government to communicate the benefits of such an application.

The Love Clean London initiative is a good inspiration: it enables citizens to report environmental problems such as poor waste storage, through texts, uploaded photographs, and reports submitted through a free application. The reports can be visualised on a map by the city government to show where clean-up actions are most needed (BIS, 2013). In Barcelona (Spain), garbage bins are equipped with sensors that send alerts to residents when they get full, to encourage them to minimise waste and recycle. In Groningen (the Netherlands), smart bins automatically send text message to the city government when they are full. It allows reducing labour and petrol costs – and thus environmental impacts – by sending garbage trucks only to bins that need emptying (BIS, 2013).

Use of ICT

Smart city tools can be an effective means to make Bandung more resilient to disaster risk. They are rapidly developing in many cities, which are already relying on sensors to monitor water levels and seismic activities. Bangkok’s Flood Control Centre (FCC) is a good example (see Section 0). Although there is room for improvement of the FCC (e.g. such as adding more elaborated analytical capacities such as the 3Di tool), it can be an interesting starting point to create smart resilient infrastructure in the City of Bandung. A complementary initiative that the City of Bandung could consider to monitor river and canal management would be to assess the conditions of waterway infrastructure such as gates. In the Santa Clara County, California, district field staffs were sent to the field to catalogue the condition of such infrastructure, with the help of GIS tablets. This initiative not only digitalised such information but also made it more easily accessible for the city government.1

There is a need to assess the quality of river and canal water in Bandung, as poor quality water represents a major health hazard if a flood occurs. Sensors could be placed in strategic locations and send data to the Bandung Command Centre for on-screen visualisation. While the city’s Command Centre will be useful to co-ordinate the action of emergency response teams, developing other smart initiatives could allow the city to tackle the lack of resilience more comprehensively, in particular by enhancing urban planning, infrastructure management, and the effectiveness of local community and private sector engagement before, during and after a disaster.

GIS is one of the most common digital tools used for mapping flood risk assessment. With regard to floods for instance, it consists in overlaying different types of GIS maps (e.g. topography, rivers, urban areas) to identify populations physically exposed to floods and earthquakes. However, no hazard map has been developed by the City of Bandung to identify such populations and take actions accordingly to prevent high human and economic damages from a potential future flood or earthquake. Capacity building is therefore required to develop such hazard maps.

However, GIS hazard maps are relatively static and do not provide an understanding of the dynamic impacts that a disaster such as a flood can have. In this regard, the City of Bandung could also consider complementary types of digital technologies to inform resilient urban planning. The Public Utilities Board of Singapore, for instance, is using simulation software called 3Di.2 This not only measures real-time water levels in different places in the city, but analyses, models and forecasts potential water flows in the city in case of flash floods. Such a system can help to identify catchment-wide solutions to reduce the speed of surface runoff in urban areas, to identify which areas to monitor and to decide proactively on appropriate land-use and infrastructure strategies (Public Utilities Board of Singapore, 2013). Such technology should be distributed to other local authorities in the West Java Province and to the provincial government, to assess region-wide water flows and encourage a comprehensive regional approach. This is critical because the software may help to identify weaknesses in other local areas that are also risk factors for the City of Bandung.

The Aqueduct Global Flood Analyser estimates the human and economic damages potentially born by floods, based on different scenarios and geographical scales. For instance, it estimates that even in a scenario of moderate climate change and continuation of current socio-economic development trends, and assuming a 50-year infrastructure protection, the West Java State could undergo damages of more than USD 500 million by 2030, and more than 47 000 persons would be affected. Since West Java State is the smallest unit of analysis, the Aqueduct Global Flood Analyser does not produce detailed information on the City of Bandung or its metropolitan area. The local government could therefore consider developing a partnership with the WRI to produce data at the local level.

This study found that ICT can provide a more ambitious and needed understanding of the performance of infrastructure as regards resilience. The Bandung Command Centre could connect information on water levels collected through sensors and warning systems that would automatically be activated. Such sensors need to be developed and digitalised in parallel with a geo-referenced database of natural streams and man-made drainage channels to help identify their proper locations. Although sensors are important, further tools need to be developed to grasp the complexity of the impact of a natural disaster on urban infrastructure, and how to manage all types of infrastructure (transport, energy, water, etc.) in a co-ordinated way when a disaster occurs. Rio de Janeiro’s Operations Centre is a citywide data system integrating information on different types of urban infrastructure. It collates all data, input online, to identify trends and complex impacts of potential disasters, such as floods, fires and landslides. Further, the Operations Centre remotely controls sirens that indicate to people in the poorest urban areas where to take shelter in case of heavy rainfall The City of Bandung could consider developing such technology, and integrate it in the Bandung Command Centre, considerably enlarging its disaster response capacities, which are mostly limited to police and fire brigade interventions.

The Bandung Command Centre already informs police and fire brigades if a disaster occurs, but this study has found that the local government should also include the citizens as a critical resource to ensure resilience. The Centre can utilise smart city tools during a disaster to collect street-level information from citizens to identify priority needs. The leaders of volunteer communities should be identified and can be equipped with mobile devices so that the local government or the Centre can contact them directly. Since Bandung faces the risk of a major earthquake, flood or volcanic eruption, it should develop a system to identify priority needs such as an emergency switchboard. The Bandung Command Centre could work as a central unit collecting and organising SMS, calls, and social media posts since it already collects input from citizens via Twitter. The staff in charge of the Centre must be ready to receive a greater number of inputs in case of disaster, and thus, capacity building may be required.

Vertical and horizontal co-ordination

Disaster response falls under the aegis of the National Agency for Disaster Management (BNBP) and Disaster Management Authority (DMA) as the lead agencies in Indonesia. They co-ordinate with other ministries at the national level and with provincial level BNBP agencies to carry out their respective roles and responsibilities. At the national level, the BNBP has been actively implementing programmes to enhance the country’s DRM, many of which are related to cities. For example, a program to strengthen its national and regional hydro-meteorological institutions has been conducted with technical and financial assistance from USAID as part of the Asia Flood Network. Overall, there were 14 country-specific programmes in 2014. The other programmes include: the Program for the Enhancement of Emergency Response (PEER), the Volcano Disaster Assistance Program (VDAP), Mobile Communication for Preparedness in Southeast Asia Program, and the Indonesia Liquidity Facility After Disasters (ILFAD) Program.

Despite the Indonesian government’s active engagement, DRM actions at local levels are not well linked with the central government. For example, the DMA reports that many provincial disaster management agencies (BPBDs) have limited human and financial resources, inadequate equipment, and lack local disaster preparedness plans. They also reported that BPBDs are reluctant to use their limited provincial budgets and instead rely on Indonesia’s national disaster funds. Only 18 of the 33 provinces in Indonesia have established corresponding regional offices (Give2Asia, 2016). In addition, the current DRM approach in the BMA is very focused on disaster response. A governance reform within the administration may be necessary to adopt a more holistic approach including preparation and prevention policies. Understanding the potential benefits of a holistic approach to DRM would be crucial to gain political support at the provincial and local levels and to lead policy actions.

The City of Bandung demonstrates a lack of horizontal co-operation within the city government in terms of DRM. An ad-hoc Task Force on Disaster Management (Satkorlak Penanggulangan Bencana dan Pengungsi), which incorporates several public agencies, focuses solely on post-disaster response, and while the fire department is responsible for disaster preparation, uncertainty clouds other agencies’ respective responsibilities (Bandung City, 2015). The lack of clearly defined roles has led to inadequate co-ordination and communication between departments, especially as part of preparation and prevention efforts. This is partly because DRM is understood as disaster response (thus understood as something for which the fire department should be responsible). In addition, although the notion of DRM becomes wider, cities where their governance systems are rigidly ‘stove-piped within sectoral silos’ tend to have greater difficulty addressing the cross-sectoral implications of climate and disaster threats. Responsibilities and roles tend to be rigidly defined, but fragmented and disputed. This slows down efforts to build greater climate resilience beforehand and to respond afterwards.

A possible solution is to create a DRM taskforce chaired by the Department of Development and Planning of Bandung City. Such a taskforce could bring all the relevant departments in the city government on board, and be advised by external advisory groups who can oversee all the city government’s DRM actions. The Bandung Command Centre could also be used as a more central governance tool in DRM in the city to co-ordinate data and action from the various relevant departments (not only fire and rescue but also environment, urban planning, communication, police, etc.). Another important option is a Local Resilience Action Plan, which can mainstream DRM across Bandung’s plans, budgets, and daily operations.

Local co-ordination

In June 2018, a presidential decree officially approved the establishment of a BMA-level metropolitan co-ordinating body. The first of its kind in Indonesia, the establishment of such a body should be welcomed as it seeks to enhance policy co-ordination on DRM. The objective of this body is to co-ordinate policies through BMA-wide master plans, but also to facilitate private investment in the region. West Java Province functions as a co-ordinator for the body and decisions will be collectively made by the five municipalities. This executive structure will be particularly helpful as the West Java Province is always involved in any project mobilising at least two municipalities, which is the case of some ongoing projects such as the Light Rapid Transit (LRT). It could also be an opportunity for the provincial government to be more active and visible in the development of the BMA. The central government can intervene on certain issues – the BMA is designated as a “national strategic area” – and also has important financial influence as it can decide whether to prioritise projects collectively agreed upon by the BMA.

The establishment of the new body will be particularly useful since co-ordination between local governments in the BMA has been a challenge to date. As mentioned previously, decentralisation reforms in Indonesia have tended to empower cities without creating incentives for horizontal collaboration in parallel, thereby discouraging local governments from making efforts to talk to and govern with their neighbours. In addition, many local government officials lack awareness on the co-ordination needs created by decentralisation reforms and their potential benefits (Firman, 2009). The parochial attitude of many local governments has caused a number of problems in services which require cross-border co-operation, including solid waste management and water supply, in many regions in Indonesia (Firman, 2009). This has exacerbated the already limited provision of urban services because the BMA’s local governments work counterintuitively to their collective good.

In order to enhance DRM in the BMA, the new metropolitan co-ordinating body could address in priority the following most critical horizontal co-ordination issues in the BMA:

• Flood risk management: rapid land-conversion for real estate development in the BMA has decreased its ecological function and water absorptive capacities, leading to higher risks of floods (Hudalah, et al., 2010). Part of the problem lies in the absence of a metropolitan-wide action plan for flood management, with strategies such as the creation of buffer zones.

• Solid waste management: the City of Bandung lacks appropriate space to dump collected solid waste in sanitary landfills and to adapt to the increasing amounts of waste generated, which already exceed current collection and treatment capacities. At present, BMA’s five municipal areas rely on the same landfill site, which is under great stress and has been repeatedly scheduled to close, most recently in 2015 (IGES and City of Kawasaki, 2015). Negotiations to use vacant lands in the surrounding areas of BMA have been unsuccessful (Tarigan, et al., 2015) and further co-operation is needed. Some current green projects such as the introduction of biodigesters in Bandung City will also receive waste from the surrounding municipalities and require efficient co-operation on the conveyance system; and

• Water supply: the five municipalities of the BMA use the same groundwater aquifer, which is under stress from high consumption from residential, commercial and industrial activities. To avoid depletion of water resources and ensure sustainable supply to the households and economic activities, all local government units must agree together on a water supply and sanitation plan and adopt harmonised water extraction rules in the whole BMA. Likewise, the study on the drainage master plan undertaken in 2009 in the BMA recommended metropolitan-wide watershed management actions such as building dams and water ponds. No implementation has followed the study to date.

As the co-ordinating body was only recently approved by presidential decree in June 2018, it is too early to assess its implementation. In order to assess the effectiveness of its implementation in the future, a few criteria must be considered: the transparency of decision-making; the adequacy of the technical, political, and financial resources of the BMA; whether co-ordination mechanisms with other levels of government have been established, and the legitimacy of such mechanisms; whether the intended authority conferred to the body has been respected in practice. Effective monitoring and evaluation practices must be implemented to assess these criteria and should be prioritised.

Disaster risk financing

Bandung is in a similar situation to many other cities in the developing world in that the financial resources are difficult to obtain and are inadequate relative to the scale required. To date, Bandung has used traditional financing instruments and approaches of “balance sheet” self-funding, transfers from provincial and central governments, and conventional financing to pay for public amenities and services.

There was little evidence of innovative financing strategies or climate risk insurance instruments being used to pay for or insure investments that would enhance Bandung’s financial capacity. Although Bandung’s revenue has recently increased, the city of Bandung still has limited authority and scope to internally generate its revenue and must depend upon its own limited resources, government transfers, and private sector financing.

Stakeholder engagement

Building greater resilience to climate change and natural disasters will also enhance Bandung’s local social capital. In addition to the Bandung government’s own DRM efforts, public officials should engage the largest possible coalition of local stakeholders in all shared decision-making processes. These stakeholders should come from local private sector associations, community and civic groups, religious and educational institutions, and work together in partnership with local and provincial government authorities to create innovative solutions to their most pressing concerns and needs related to DRM. An ideal vehicle for such collaboration would be the VRA and LRAP processes.

In addition to urban planning and infrastructure strategies, effectively engaging the private sector and local communities is a very important requirement to ensure economic and social resilience. Of course, the internet provides opportunities to diffuse information about natural disasters and how to be prepared for them, as exemplified by the Greater London Authority (detailed above). The City of Bandung should replicate this digital tool while diffusing information about resilience more comprehensively. The overall objective should be to more effectively engage the private sector and local communities before, during and after a disaster.