Effective environment indicators on improving the resilience of Mashhad neighborhoods

The concept of urban resilience has drawn more attention in recent years, especially in terms of urban planning. This concept is particularly highlighted when a city or community encounters threats such as natural hazards and rapid population growth. To respond to these threats, a comprehensive resilience assessment is required to identify priority areas for disaster risk management. Resilience is a multi-faced and complex concept, and any effort to evaluate it must take into account its social, economic, physical, and environmental dimensions. The city of Mashhad, as the second-largest city in Iran, is one of the most vulnerable cities due to being surrounded by several active faults, including Toos, Kashfarood, and Shandiz-Sang Bost. Since this city is located in a moderate to high earthquake risk zone, it is very necessary to pay attention to the resilience of this city against the earthquake crisis and implement management measures to increase the resilience capacity of this city. Accordingly, this study aims to evaluate urban resilience's capacity by introducing various indicators that promote resilience. This study focuses on two main domains: resilience dimensions and resilience criteria. This research has integrated three dimensions of resilience: social, cultural, physical, environmental, and economic, with four criteria of a resilient city: resistance, adaptation capacity, redundancy, and recovery to measure resilience capacity. A wide range of indicators covering all dimensions of resilience has been identified, enabling us to understand how resilient an area is structurally and functionally in the face of a natural disaster. Four neighborhoods of Mashhad (Khajeh Rabi, Sajjad, Honarestan, and Hijab) were selected as case studies. To calculate resilience capacity, each indicator of resilience dimensions was scored based on the analysis of statistical data and expert opinions. Findings show that all selected neighborhoods represent a moderate resilience against disasters like an earthquake. However, Sajjad has a higher resilience to face unexpected circumstances like an earthquake than the other three neighborhoods. According to the research findings, more structural and non-structural measures should be taken to improve resilience capacity, especially in the neighborhoods of Khajeh Rabi, Hijab, and Honarestan. This study concludes that urban resiliency in selected neighborhoods is strongly associated with social indicators such as residents' knowledge and awareness, the level of public participation, economic indicators including income and employment, as well as physical-environmental status in terms of urban and health infrastructure. The proposed framework for evaluating urban resiliency using various indicators in this study can be served as a basis for further investigations and development of methodologies that simultaneously consider the temporal and spatial dimensions of resilience.

Automated summary

This study evaluates urban resilience in four neighborhoods in Mashhad, Iran by introducing various indicators to assess their disaster response capabilities. Findings reveal that Sajjad neighborhood shows higher resilience to face unexpected circumstances like earthquakes compared to the other three neighborhoods. The research suggests that additional measures should be taken to improve overall resilience, particularly in Khajeh Rabi, Hijab, and Honarestan neighborhoods.