Integrated natural disasters urban resilience evaluation: the case of China

Abstract

China is one of the countries affected most by natural hazards. With the rapid urbanization process, the susceptibility of Chinese cities to natural disasters increases. In this paper, we propose an integrated natural disaster urban resilience evaluation framework for Chinese cities. We aggregate city-level economic, social, infrastructural, and environmental indicators of 39 major Chinese cities from 2002 to 2017 and convert them to a multi-dimensional resilience index using factor analysis. We validate our measure by showing that cities with larger resilience indices have lower natural disaster losses. We further investigate the regional characteristics of our urban resilience index and find that Chinese cities improved their resilience to natural hazards across the years. Although cities in the eastern coastal area tend to be more resilient than cities in other regions, the gap has been narrowed. Our paper provides some insights into how cities may measure and improve their urban resilience system.