From Smart City Pilots to Institutionalised Urban Resilience: The Smart Urban Resilience Framework (SURF)

Australian local governments are increasingly deploying smart city technologies to manage climate-related shocks and chronic stresses, yet implementation often remains fragmented and difficult to embed in routine practice. Many initiatives stall in “pilot-forever” cycles because decision rights, equity safeguards, operational integration, and learning systems are applied inconsistently. This paper introduces the Smart Urban Resilience Framework (SURF), a phase-gated, tier-aware governance framework designed to support the institutionalisation of smart urban resilience through more transparent and evidence-based decision-making. The SURF is grounded in an integrated evidence-to-design synthesis drawing on a systematic review, a comparative analysis of Tier 1 and Tier 2 Australian local government strategies, an in-depth Sydney case study, and stakeholder interviews. Although empirically grounded in Australian local government, the SURF is designed as a governance architecture that may be adapted in comparable municipal settings elsewhere. The framework comprises a staged pathway, two evidence gates, and four concurrent action tracks, supported by enabling layers and traceable evidence tools. The SURF is presented as a practical implementation architecture intended to support more transparent and defensible decisions about funding, scaling, refining, or retiring smart resilience initiatives. In this paper, resilience is operationalised through a service continuity lens, focusing on how digital initiatives can be embedded in governance and delivery systems to support the continuity of essential local government services under stress.