Expect the unexpected: how to measure and improve a city's resilience

By Nick Mead

Concepción, a coastal city in Chile, was hit by a major quake in February 2010.

While traditional disaster risk management meant the city was well prepared in terms of strict building codes, limiting damage and loss of life, what was not foreseen was the total breakdown of communications networks. With critical services like water, electricity and sewerage networks severely disrupted, officials were unable to communicate with each other, coordinate help from the government in Santiago or keep the public up-to-date with what was happening. Reports of food shortages and theft escalated into looting and panic, until the military were brought in to restore order.

What traditional risk management missed became clear, though, when Concepción used the City Resilience Index (CRI), a new tool developed and launched today by engineering consultancy Arup for the Rockefeller Foundation. The CRI measures a city’s resilience. Participants (usually municipal governments) answer 156 questions covering issues from health and wellbeing to economy and society, infrastructure and ecosystems to leadership and strategy. How affordable is transport? How robust is planning? How much green space is there? Answers to these questions – both qualitative and quantitative – give the city a holistic ‘resilience profile’.