A system dynamics model and analytic network process: An integrated approach to investigate urban resilience

During the last decade, the concept of urban resilience has been increasingly implemented in urban planning, with the main aim to design urban development strategies. Urban resilience is a multi-dimensional and dynamic concept. When applied to urban planning, it consists of studying cities as complex socio-economic systems. Municipalities are currently working to undertake appropriate actions to enrich the resilience of cities. Moreover, several difficulties concern the evaluation of the impacts over time of the strategies designed to enhance urban resilience. The present paper proposes an integrated approach based on the System Dynamics Model (SDM) and the Analytic Network Process (ANP). The objective of this research is to describe the method and to illustrate its application to the area called Basse di Stura, located in the city of Turin, Italy. The method is applied to evaluate the possible impacts of two different urban scenarios in terms of the change of urban resilience performance over time. The final result is represented by an index that describes urban resilience performance

Documenting cultural heritage in an INSPIRE-based 3D GIS for risk and vulnerability analysis

Purpose: The study, within the Increasing Resilience of Cultural Heritage (ResCult) project, aims to support civil protection to prevent, lessen and mitigate disasters impacts on cultural heritage using a unique standardised-3D geographical information system (GIS), including both heritage and risk and hazard information. Design/methodology/approach: A top-down approach, starting from existing standards (an INSPIRE extension integrated with other parts from the standardised and shared structure), was completed with a bottom-up integration according to current requirements for disaster prevention procedures and risk analyses. The results were validated and tested in case studies (differentiated concerning the hazard and type of protected heritage) and refined during user forums. Findings: Besides the ensuing reusable database structure, the filling with case studies data underlined the tough challenges and allowed proposing a sample of workflows and possible guidelines. The interfaces are provided to use the obtained knowledge base. Originality/value: The increasing number of natural disasters could severely damage the cultural heritage, causing permanent damage to movable and immovable assets and tangible and intangible heritage. The study provides an original tool properly relating the (spatial) information regarding cultural heritage and the risk factors in a unique archive as a standard-based European tool to cope with these frequent losses, preventing risk

Implementing urban resilience in urban planning: A comprehensive framework for urban resilience evaluation

Urban resilience as a transformative approach has become a central paradigm to define urban policy for making cities resilient. This implementation has multifaceted implications, ranging from the employment of the correct resilience approach for urban systems to the definition of the appropriate assessment framework to address all urban resilience features. This paper addresses the implications concerning the new requirements and open research questions of urban resilience assessment for resilient development for cities. According to this purpose, this paper provides three literature reviews to explore and critically analyse the different approaches of resilience and the several definitions of urban resilience in academic and operative fields, to address the dimensions, multifaceted characteristics, and key factors to being evaluated within an urban resilience enhancement perspective. The result is a comprehensive framework that identifies the five dimensions of urban resilience (economy, society, environment, nature, and governance), the relative urban components, and nine urban resilience capacities that have to be included in the evaluation of urban resilience as a transformative approach. The main novelty and contribution of the proposed research is the obtained framework that can be used as a guideline to define a comprehensive evaluation approach to assess urban resilience in its implementation in urban planning as a transformative approach. The final aim of the proposed research is to support in an operational manner the development of suitable evaluation methods to investigate strategic strategies within the aim of urban resilience enhancement, through a complex and multidimensional perspective

NBS Design and Implementation in Urban Systems: Dimensions, Challenges and Issues to Construct a Comprehensive Evaluation Framework

The paper explores the recent challenge of implementing Nature-Based Solutions (NBS) in urban systems, as they represent an opportunity to address social, economic, and environmental issues. Furthermore, the design and implementation of NBS in the urban context are also supported by international and national policies, such as the European Green Deal, the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and the Italian Recovery and Resilience Plan (PNRR). However, despite the growing attention on this topic, there are some critical aspects still unexplored. The European Commission discuss in-depth about these aspects, declaring them as the key points to set future research. Specifically, it has been pointed out that one of the main critical issues to be investigated concerns the development and test of Decision Support Systems (DSS), evaluation tools and models to comprehensively assess NBS interventions to support their design and implementation in urban systems. According to this scenario, this paper is inserted into this research topic. More in detail, the present dissertation is a position paper that underlines the main criticalities concerning the NBS evaluation and identifies a methodological framework and some evaluation techniques that could be used to structure an evaluation framework to overcome the highlighted gaps to answer real operative requirements

Addressing social inclusion within urban resilience: A system dynamics approach

Cities are afflicted by different stresses and shocks that make urban systems exposed to a high level of uncertainty. Global community is interested in enhancing urban resilience to make cities able to respond and adapt to these circumstances. Urban resilience is a complex, evolutionary and multidimensional approach to design and manage cities. Furthermore, urban systems have to own some specific characteristics to reach or maintain their resilience, among which the inclusivity. One of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) is focused on making cities safer, resilient and inclusive. Inclusivity embraces all urban resilience and city dimensions and its analysis and assessment are very complicated. This paper developed a System Dynamics Model to analyse how the level of inclusivity can change over time concerning to the stresses that afflict the socio-economic conditions of the population. The objective of this investigation is to highlight the connection between inclusivity and the vulnerable population, considering its importance in urban resilience enhancing. This approach has been applied to investigate the inclusivity of the city of Turin (Italy). The final challenge of this application is developing an evaluation approach able to predict the possible conditions of the urban systems in the future. The aim of this research is providing an evaluation tool with these characteristics to support the definition of strategies to enhance urban resilience within the assessment of the resilience capacities

Experimenting System Dynamics Model to Assess the Impacts of Urban Regeneration Processes

Cities are complex and dynamic systems characterized by a high level of uncertainty and vulnerability that involve social, economic, and environmental components. In this context, both urban regeneration and urban transformation processes have to face complexity and uncertainty. This research belongs to the wide research field that aims at developing new evaluation approaches that are able to manage both the complexity and the impacts of the urban regeneration process. This paper proposes the System Dynamics Model (SDM) to analyze an urban regeneration process of the Aurora neighborhood, in the city of Turin. The aim is to identify the mutual relationships that occur among the social, economic, and urban components that are involved in this process. In detail, this research gives specific attention to the analysis of social components of the area with the aim of focusing on the multiculturality of the area under investigation. The result is a preliminary insight that identifies the probable multidimensional impacts generated by the regeneration project. This application underlines thus the suitability of the SDM to support the decision-makers in the development of urban strategies within the perspective of a sustainable, multi-cultural and inclusive city

Exploring the Redundancy Capacity Through a System Dynamics Approach

Current urban agenda is interested in developing urban strategies to enhance urban resilience for cities. This paper examines the concept of urban resilience applied in the context of urban planning with specific attention to which are the capacities that make urban systems resilient. The knowledge and the understanding of these capacities are fundamental to set up suitable strategies. However, only few frameworks consider urban resilience and its capacity within the complexity of urban system. Through an in-depth literature review, this paper aims at providing a methodological framework both to recognize these capacities and analyze which are the main factors that mainly contribute to the achievement of these ability. The paper illustrates the first step of the application of a System Dynamics approach to analyze the redundancy capacity in order to define which are the key variables to enhance this capacity and also to determine which can be the impacts on the urban systems as a whole of the redundancy

Fuzzy cognitive maps: A dynamic approach for urban regeneration processes evaluation

Cities are complex, dynamic and adaptive systems that are in continuous evolution. This trend is influenced by causal relationships that occur between the social, political, economic and environmental dimensions that are at the basis of the urban system. Starting from these circum- stances, investigating and evaluating the city as a complex and adaptive system has become a fundamental issue in the context of urban transformation and regeneration operations. These are complex and dynamic processes both in temporal and spatial scale that are characterised by a multiplicity of variables, objectives and interests. For these characteristics, they represent particular decision problems described by an high level of uncertainty espe- cially related to the appraisal of their possible future impacts on the social, economic and environmental dimensions. Currently, in the fields of urban studies a promising approach is represented by the Fuzzy Cognitive Maps (FCMs). The peculiarity of this technique is the ability both to describe and analyse the functioning of complex systems through a cognitive map and to simulate their possible evolution, starting from the current conditions. For this reason, the technique of FCMs has been applied to study and analyse complex systems, related to those domains characterised by a high level of uncertainty, such as cities and their transformation processes. This paper shows the application of an integrated evalu- ation approach based on the FCMs technique to two dif- ferent urban regeneration processes. The article aims to underline both the strenghts of this technique, focusing on its ability to represent and manage the complexity of urban regeneration processes, and the critical aspects to identify the elements that to be developed in the future research