An Integrated Approach towards Measuring and Comparing Cities’ Socio-Economic Resilience: Fid-Bau Portal

An Integrated Approach towards Measuring and Comparing Cities’ Socio-Economic Resilience

Kumar, Shantanu / Mehany, Mohammed S. Hashem M.

In recent decades, natural disasters and financial crisis have been the catalyst to the conception of sustainable development and resiliency fundamentals to help cities become more resilient to natural disasters and economic turmoil. Among many resiliency fundamentals, socio-economic resilience (SER) is a critical component for a resilient city. Many researchers and organizations have developed measures for SER assessment, however, usage of a standardized metric to assess cities has not been sufficiently addressed in previous research work. This research study provides a comprehensive standardized framework for measuring SER that directly and indirectly affects citizens. The research study is built on the SER measures captured in previous literature and validated by experts in the field of socioeconomic resilience to develop key performance indicators (KPIs) that can serve as a standardized metric for SER. Some of these KPIs are income level, unemployment, percentage of the population having access to social protection, and the percentage of people having access to public transport. For any given city’s SER, these KPIs are rated over an informed numerical scale and the total points are calculated (SER score) to provide a platform for comparing different cities in terms of their strengths and weaknesses of SER using this standardized metric. The outcome of this research provides a standardized performance metric for SER through an intense assessment of KPIs, followed by calculation of a total SER score for different cities. This research study strives to provide an experts-validated quantitative assessment metric that implores state governments, city officials, and the citizens to collectively improve the overall social and economic resilience.