As climate change advances, more cities across the world are coming to realize the essential need for resilience-oriented planning. This article summarizes findings of a research project on developing tools and indicators for assessing urban resilience. A mixed-methods approach is taken to investigate various issues related to development and implementation of integrated resilience assessment tools. This includes an extensive review of a vast body of literature published on urban resilience, content analyses of existing assessment frameworks, and employment of methods such as checklist surveys and “structured interview matrix” to use the knowledge of experts in the field. Based on the literature review several criteria are identified that can be used for developing assessment tools suitable for informing decision-making process. Examination of a selected number of assessment tools shows that most of them fall short of appropriately addressing these criteria and further improvements are required. This study argues that resilience is a multi-dimensional concept. The five dimensions identified here are, namely, environmental, social, economic, physical, and institutional. It is emphasized that various criteria related to these dimensions should be appropriately addressed during various planning, absorption, recovery, and adaptation stages of disaster risk management.
Peer-reviewed publication