**6. Improving collaborations**

If opportunities for identifying and building resilience exist within taking a people-centred approach and embracing the complexity of cities through a systems lens, then a third, vital area concerns improving collaborations between the vast range of actors involved in disaster recovery—and, in particular, engaging those who are often excluded from traditional decision-making processes.

Local actors include local governments, local NGOs and community groups, private sector businesses, community neighbourhood groups and faith-based organisations. Groups often less engaged with include gangs. According to Hagedorn (2014), 'while most gangs are unsupervised teenage peer groups, many are institutionalised in ghettos, barrios and *favelas* across the world' [30].

Disaster recovery operations involving international humanitarian organisations have a poor track record when it comes to collaborating with local actors. Local actors such as local authorities and local NGOs can feel excluded from coordination meetings—usually held in English—that are dominated by cash-rich international NGOs, UN agencies and others. One study of the response of 13 INGOs following Typhoon Haiyan found that, across the track of the typhoon that struck the central region of the Philippines, local government was largely bypassed by aid agencies, which worked directly at the community level [31].

#### *Identifying Opportunities to Build Resilience in Urban Disaster Recovery DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.109475*

The system for agency coordination that has been in place since 2005 is known as 'the cluster system', which essentially convenes meetings between agencies delivering assistance along sectoral lines (such as health, protection and education). The system though has come in for criticism in relation to urban response: as the Inter-Agency Standing Committee (IASC) states, 'the current cluster system is structured around sectors of expertise and sectorial coordination, while in a context of urban crises there might be a need to identify and respond holistically to multi-sectorial needs in a given territory, requiring stronger inter-cluster linkages and coordination at citylevel' [32]. Also, the International Rescue Committee (IRC) notes, 'The traditional cluster system does not lend itself to the complexity of needs, services and systems across an urban landscape with humanitarian agencies struggling to deal with the complexity, density and built environment of towns and cities or [un]able to take full advantage of the potential a city has to offer' [33].

A large opportunity therefore for building resilience in recovery concerns improving collaboration between actors. This in particular means international agencies supporting local actors. Collaboration, ranging from information exchange, negotiation, discussion and possible coordination, with a number of actors, despite the Cluster approach, is vital. Gangs, who are often gatekeepers to lower-income settlements, need to be engaged with. The International Committee of the Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (ICRC) notes that it is important to gain acceptance from gang leaders, that there needs to be a benefit accrued to gang leaders, and to avoid undermining the status and position of gangs in recovery efforts relief [34].

Better collaboration of course also means sharing—or sometimes reversing—power, something which is very difficult indeed for those who hold the power. This essentially was at the core of the outcomes of the first-ever World Humanitarian Summit (WHS), held in 2016. Some 8000 delegates from across the world attended, including UN agencies, donors, Northern and Southern NGOs and others. The resulting 'Grand Bargain', negotiated at the conference, identified nine thematic work streams, which among other things called for greater transparency (such as in in decision-making and prioritisation of support) and more support and funding tools to local and national responders.
