No abstract

Critical infrastructures share the same space and mutual dependencies, and consequently contribute to city's overall resilience. However, each has different assessment methods and metrics, which prevents the integration of the performance results for different infrastructures into a single holistic evaluation index that can reflect the city's overall resilience and expected performance. To address this challenge, we propose the development of a multi-criteria-based integration approach that can allow the combination of different evaluation results from different assessment methods through partial factors. The proposed equation incorporates several factors, which can be divided into four groups: (1) method-efficiency factors, (2) infrastructure importance factors, (3) infrastructures' interdependency factors, and (4) strict limits that ensure that the infrastructures are suitable for hosting mega sports events. Using this approach, we hope to open the way for future research into suitable factors and facilitate resilience-based design in sustainable development and municipal planning.

Over the past decade, the adverse impacts of climate change and excessive urbanization have contributed to several unfamiliar and costly floods in the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC), especially in Qatar. With limited historical rainfall records and unprecedented precipitation intensities impacting the efficiency of hydrological models, the multi-criteria decision analysis (MCDA) presents a suitable alternative approach to assess and identify flood-susceptible areas. In this study, we applied MCDA to several factors that contribute to flood susceptibility, namely: elevation, slope, groundwater depth, distance to a drainage system, and land use. These criteria were assigned different weights based on their contribution and previous literature and later underwent a sensitivity analysis. The study’s results correlate well with recent flooding events, proving the method’s efficiency in identifying hotspots. This study is expected to provide a rapid tool to support the decision-making process for future urban expansion, sustainable development, and resilience planning in Qatar.