A tailored model to measure the resilience of north coastal communities at risk in Nile Delta

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ABSTRACT As a result of growing climate change, coastal communities frequently face unexpected natural disasters. The resilience of communities has gained importance in international development discourse over the past decade. Models for gauging community resilience exist, and some of them are applied in coastal Egypt. The communities in the Delta region overlooking the Mediterranean are unique and require a more detailed model to measure their resilience to sea-level rise (SLR) and shoreline erosion. The paper highlights the definition of resilience and vulnerability, characteristics of resilient communities, environmental pressures and the vulnerability of Mediterranean Sea coastal areas, and the selection of the Nile Delta area to apply the proposed measurement model. Last but not least, the proposed resilience model is achieved through deduction by reviewing various methods and models used globally and in Egypt and extracting indicators of assessment, setting relative weights for indicators and their aspects through polling 50 urban experts, and analyzing results using the analytical hierarchy process (AHP). The proposed model included 41 weighted indicators classified to unique and general indicators covering six aspects. The model’s measurement scale (0–100). Finally, the assessment shows that Borg El-Burullus, in the Delta Coast’s second zone, has moderate resilience (46.6%) but faces challenges in economic diversification, governance, infrastructure, and data availability, limiting effective resilience strategies. To address these issues, targeted policies, improved data availability, enhanced governance, investments in environmental protection, community engagement, and economic diversification are critical for building community resilience.