Towards resilient cities: development of a city resilience assessment tool

Cities are increasingly suffering impact and damages from climate change and natural disasters, creating extensive harm to society, infrastructures, economy and environment. Therefore, increasing resilience level is vital to better deal with future disasters and guarantee the safety of the population. To improve resilience, first the urban resilience level of the cities should be assessed. This research presents a resilience self-assessment tool designed to assist decision-makers in assessing their cities' resilience level from a multidisciplinary approach. It aims to define a roadmap for the resilience building process, illustrate the current situation and evolution over time, and provide a benchmark with similar cities. Based on the SMR city resilience maturity model (SMR RMM), this research outlines the process undertaken to create the self-assessment tool. It discusses the steps involved and presents the results achieved. The self-assessment tool is composed of three integrated elements: a self-assessment questionnaire to gather data on the city’s resilience level, a prioritization model to define the order in which the city should implement the policies in the future, and a dashboard to illustrate the results of the questionnaire and the prioritization model. This tool has been validated through a pilot test in a city in northern Spain.