SKI Focus Report 10: Urban Resilience

Today, continually increasing population densities within urban areas are compounding social and infrastructural complexity. At the same time issues such as global economic interdependence and environmental change are creating or exacerbating vulnerabilities that sit along a broad spectrum of risks and threats, which can be concentrated or diffuse, fast or slow-moving. In the face of such shifts, the role of establishing, enhancing or maintaining resilience in the urban space has become an exceedingly important, though difficult task. This study examines resilience in the urban space by focusing on critical infrastructure resilience and uniquely draws out its interdependent relationship with critical social infrastructures (CSI), which includes services such as health services, insurance, relief organizations, etc., that often help communities cope with the impact of CI disruptions.