Developing an integrated framework to quantify resilience of urban systems against disasters

Urban resilience against disasters represents a key issue for contemporary society. The increasing complexity of cities along with more severe threats induced by climate change is pressing modern societies to search for new paths to prevention, preparedness and rapid recovery. As a result, resilience is triggering an increasing interest within many scientific contexts to explore the capabilities of communities to withstand extreme events. The present study proposes a framework aimed at quantifying disaster resilience of urban systems while ensuring an adequate level of sustainability, all according to a social and human-centric perspective. Urban networks are modelled as hybrid social–physical networks (HSPNs) by merging both physical and social components, and engineering measures are performed on HSPNs, as a measure of urban efficiency, within a multi-scale approach. Thence, social indicators are identified in order to characterise quality of life in the aftermath of a catastrophic event. Both efficiency and quality of life indicators are evaluated using a time–discrete approach before and after an extreme event occurs and during the recovery phase in order to measure inhabitant happiness and environmental sustainability. This approach allows handling different kinds of information simultaneously, being potentially implemented both in peacetime and during the recovery process. The former can be effective for urban coping capacity assessment in order to reduce risks as a mitigation instrument. The latter can be used in the post-event to identify the best recovery paths needing to be followed for adaptation. © 2015, Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht.