Megacities in developing countries face enormous challenges: Rapid economic and urbanisation dynamics are threatened by multiple natural and anthropogenic risks. The megacity of Yangon, the leading economic center of Myanmar in the opening process and political transition, will be better protected against multiple risks – earthquakes, floods, tropical cyclones and the Covid pandemic – by the development of an integrative, sustainable risk management concept. After cyclone Nargis (2008), legal frameworks were created and institutional restructuring for risk prevention was initiated. A systematic knowledge base, culturally appropriate concepts and the implementation of a holistic risk management against multiple risks will be set up.

The transdisciplinary research project aims to develop and implement an integrated risk management concept for the megacity Yangon. The expertise of international and Myanmar partners from research, government, administration, private sector, public and civil society institutions will be combined.
In a mixed-methods approach, quantitative (primary statistics, standardised surveys) and qualitative risk-related data (in-depth expert, problem-centered household interviews and focus group discussions) are collected, combined with high-resolution remote sensing data in a geographic information system, analysed in transdisciplinary workshops and used in the development of a culturally adapted concept of integrated risk management. In addition, information and training programmes, courses and interdisciplinary research qualifications are developed.

For the first time, a holistically oriented integrated risk management concept for a tropical megacity will be developed using the example of Yangon. Through the exchange of international scientific and transdisciplinary knowledge, new concepts of culturally appropriate institutional and civil society risk prevention, a cooperation and communication concept of institutional risk prevention and information and qualification programmes for reducing the consequences of multiple risks will be developed. Innovations are particularly the focus on concepts for the protection of personal documents, a precautionary concept for system-relevant small/medium-sized enterprises (securing critical infrastructure) and an exchange platform for sustainable “build back better” strategies. Innovative risk analysis and visualisation procedures in urban space are developed by integrating existing databases in conjunction with high-resolution remote sensing data.