TY - JOUR AB - Purpose– This paper aims to review and develop lessons learned from the United Nations Office of Disaster Risk Reduction Local Government Self Assessment Tool (LGSAT) experience in four cities. The capacity to understand, learn from and respond to or reorganize in the face of change is at the core of urban resilience to disasters, climate change and major shocks. Self assessments, like the LGSAT, can be used to engage city stakeholders in critically assessing and understanding their capacity according to a set of standards of resilience. Design/methodology/approach– City stakeholders in four cities, Hat Yai and Udon Thani, Thailand and Hue and Lao Cai, Vietnam, completed the LGSAT in an open multi-stakeholder process as part of urban climate resilience programs. Findings– Completing the LGSAT provided important and valuable information about institutional capacity that is important for disaster risk reduction and climate change efforts. Multi-stakeholder processes allowed for greater and more sustained dialogue among groups that may not have a chance to interact regularly and helped build trust and relationships that contribute to climate resilience and disaster risk reduction efforts. Originality/value– Further, the inclusion of multiple viewpoints allowed for more nuanced and novel consideration of issues and in multiple cities led to new projects that focused on building institutional and agent capacity. The LGSAT process relied on facilitation that was able to guide discussion, ensure safe spaces for dialogue and address stakeholder questions. Finally, while the tool was applied to questions of climate change in this process, there is still room to improve the tool to more adequately and directly address issues of climate change risk. VL - 6 IS - 1 SN - 1759-5908 DO - 10.1108/IJDRBE-08-2014-0060 UR - https://doi.org/10.1108/IJDRBE-08-2014-0060 AU - Henceroth Justin AU - Friend Richard M. AU - Thinphanga Pakamas AU - Tran Phong Van Gai AU - Nghiem Tuyen Phuong ED - Dr Jerry Velasquez PY - 2015 Y1 - 2015/01/01 TI - Lessons from self-assessments within urban climate resilience programs T2 - International Journal of Disaster Resilience in the Built Environment PB - Emerald Group Publishing Limited SP - 86 EP - 101 Y2 - 2024/04/20 ER -