Assessing and mapping urban resilience to floods with respect to cascading effects through critical infrastructure networks

Abstract

The urban environment is very concerned by network failures. These failures are propagating risks in area generally considered as non-vulnerable. There are various causes of possible disruptions in critical infrastructure networks (CIs), such as natural hazards, technological hazards, accidents, human errors and terrorism. However, in the last years it became harder to identify the possible failures of complex networks and to forecast their effects on the urban environment. New challenges such as climate change and the ageing of CIs are likely to increase the difficulty to secure the lifelines, raising the potential of damages and economic losses caused by failures. This paper suggests some new methods to assess and map resilience levels to floods taking into account critical infrastructure networks as risk propagators at different spatial scales. The conclusions support the development of innovative strategies and decision support systems for new resilient urban environments.