Alternative Resilience Indices for City Ecosystems Subjected to Natural Hazards

Abstract

Prompt and efficient responses against natural hazards are needed to build cities capable of withstanding disasters, namely resilient cities. This study aims at presenting and testing synthetic resilience indices over a real urban center threatened by multiple hazards, for which a global overview of city performance is requested. An integrated framework is proposed for quantitative resilience assessment by way of time‐independent synthetic indices. The approach proposed is in accordance to the complex network theory and uses a global indicator of the system connectivity to assess the city functioning also in case of network disruption. Resilience is evaluated as a proxy for systemic urban damage by modeling a city ecosystem as a hybrid social–physical network. Seismic and landslide scenario analyses are performed for the city of Sarno, Italy. A probability‐based approach is used to compute urban vulnerability. Subsequently, to highlight changes in results according to the type of disaster, a recovery strategy is simulated to assess efficiency and damage states in each recovery stage, and urban resilience.

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