This article is written by Craig Kesson, executive director of corporate services, chief resilience officer, and chief data officer for the City of Cape Town, and Gareth Morgan, director of resilience for the City of Cape Town

In the space of just four years, Cape Town has endured a severe, once-every-three-centuries drought, and a global pandemic. Both events have sent deep shockwaves through the city’s healthcare system and wider economy.

For one city to absorb two major shocks in such quick succession is uncommon, not to mention unfortunate. And yet, strangely, absorbing the second shock has been helped by the first, not just in terms of civic fortitude, but in the actual methodologies applied by the metropolitan government in its response.

In setting out a plan to tackle Covid-19, we actually started by consulting the lessons we’d learned from the drought.

Like many cities, Cape Town keeps a wide range of strategies in the event of a public hazard. These tend to be excellent at responding to short-lived events, though aren’t quite so robust when shocks play out in more extreme forms, over longer periods of time. Evidently, cities need to enhance their capacity to respond to crises if they’re to cope. I hope this article gives public servants some valuable insight into how this can be achieved.

• Want to write for us? Take a look at Apolitical’s guide for contributors

Following the drought in Cape Town, our city council approved the Cape Town Resilience Strategy. The strategy actively considered lessons from the drought and broke these down into priorities for building better resilience to future shocks. That list did not include a pandemic. Still, that didn’t matter. The strategy placed heavy emphasis on the general capabilities and skills that contribute to building resilience, including reflective learning, adaptive management, systems thinking and scenario planning. The City of Cape Town had, in effect, already a broad framework with which to mount its Covid-19 response.

Of course, the pandemic will be with us for some time yet. It is likely responses to it will continue to evolve as time moves on, particularly as national and local vaccination programmes gather pace. For now though, here are four approaches that have so far been used effectively in our response, and which may be of use to you.

Think about risk in a dynamic way

Quite early on in 2020 it was apparent that the pandemic was multi-faceted. There was no linear trajectory — transmission of the virus would peak and dip — and the public health response required to suppress it would have unavoidable major economic consequences. From the perspective of the metropolitan government, we not only had to provide additional resources to support various responses, but also to ensure the continuity of our core services, such as energy, water and solid waste management. There was also the overall financial sustainability of the municipality, a hellacious problem in such uncertain economic territory.

In order to monitor such a wide range of risks, we built the Dynamic Operations Framework. This was a conceptual model based on four interdependent systems essential to the response: the health system, the disaster system, the essential services system, and the corporate operations system. Each system is represented by a clock face, which is cycled through phases of risk, based on a range of indicators. This allowed us to present to decision-makers a single overview of how stresses brought on by the pandemic were manifesting in the municipality, and the degree to which components of our response were functioning.

Develop data products to inform decision-making

During the drought, we tracked dam levels and developed forecasts of those levels against which to trigger responses, such as new building projects or stricter restrictions on water consumption. For the pandemic, we similarly tracked and forecasted fatality numbers to decide exactly when to trigger various stages of our fatalities management contingency plan. This plan provided for resources beyond the regular capacity of the municipality. It ensured redundancy was achieved while minimising the risk of overinvestment in resources that wouldn’t be needed.

We also constructed a bespoke ‘vulnerability viewer’, overlaid with active infection case data, which allowed us to include thousands of risk areas, including public transport interchanges, shopping centres, highly dense informal settlements, elderly care homes, and pension pay-out points. This product was used to direct scarce resources, such as the disaster volunteer corps to enforce social distancing in congregate settings, within areas that posed a hazard so as to keep service delivery smooth and safe.

Invest in project execution skills

Both the drought and the pandemic required the development and execution of a portfolio of responses. Following the strategy process of determining what we would do, in a matter of days we were able to determine resource requirements, a fully-costed plan and an implementation schedule.

In a period of just eight weeks we were able to build 39 additional clinic facilities linked to existing clinics across the city, either through new structures or by retrofitting community facilities. This critical project, the single largest investment in the city’s primary health infrastructure in more than two decades, allowed for safe social distancing across the clinic network as it decongested existing clinics, and meant the city’s health service not only responded to Covid-19 requirements, but ensured it could continue to better deliver on its core primary health care service as well.

Use behavioural insights to improve outcomes

The drought and pandemic responses were similar in one very particular way. Both required sections of government to join hands with citizens, and citizens with one another, in order to achieve a desired outcome. For the drought, it was driving down water consumption to extend the dams storage. For the pandemic, it was “flattening the curve”. Both shock events required citizens to not only act in their own interests but in the interests of their neighbours and families.

With the help of behavioural economists, we developed a digital map during the drought that revealed publicly whether individual households were meeting their water consumption goals or not. This was achieved all the while observing strict data privacy provisions. Meanwhile, our “For the love of” campaign made use of compelling images of our city’s elders, religious leaders, teachers, NGO and essential workers, to make the case for collective action.

Looking forward

As public servants, we cannot always know what shocks will strike our cities. What we can do, however, is expand our collective capabilities as public officials so that we can respond quickly and effectively, no matter what we are confronted with.

In Cape Town, we extrapolated lessons from the drought, and harnessed them for our pandemic response. And now we are asking ourselves what we learned during the pandemic as we consider what the next shock events might be. — Craig Kesson and Gareth Morgan

We want to hear what you think about this article. Pitch an article to us or send your comments to hello@apolitical.co

(Picture Credit: Unsplash)