A disaster-damage-based framework for assessing urban resilience to intense rainfall-induced flooding

Resilience has been widely used as a concept to analyse, understand, and improve cities' coping capacities to disasters. However, it is still a challenge to operationalise and quantify resilience. This study proposes a framework for assessing resilience to disasters based on the relationship between disaster intensity and damage rate. We use intense (short-term heavy) rainfall-induced urban flooding in Shenzhen city, one of the largest cities in China, as an example to explore the main features and transferability of the proposed resilience assessment framework. In addition, we demonstrate the usability of the proposed framework by using it to assess and compare the effectiveness of two resilience-building strategies: (1) permeable pavement transformation and (2) land vulnerability reduction. This research makes an innovative contribution through its effective disaster-damage-based approach for quantitatively evaluating urban resilience to disasters, which can support building resilience and mitigating the impact of climate change.

Automated summary

This study proposes a framework for assessing urban resilience to disasters based on the relationship between disaster intensity and damage rate. It uses intense rainfall-induced urban flooding in Shenzhen as an example to explore the framework's main features. The study also demonstrates the usability of the framework by assessing and comparing two resilience-building strategies: permeable pavement transformation and land vulnerability reduction.