Beyond research delays: science funding disruptions limit community participation in climate and infrastructure planning

Accelerating growth of urban populations has become a driving force of human development, especially in developing countries. Crowded cities are centres of creativity and economic progress; however, extreme weather conditions, flooding, water quality, air pollution and other hazards create substantial vulnerability and challenges in the urban environment.The third United Nations Conference on Housing and Sustainable Urban Development (HABITAT III) in October 2016 adopted the New Urban Agenda (United Nations, 2017), which brings into focus urban resilience, climate and environment sustainability, and disaster risk management. Following the event at the United Nations Economic and Social Council, efforts are required from WMO to consolidate its input to the revision of the New Urban Agenda (NUA) and support urban related activities in a comprehensive manner. Urban development is now a cornerstone of the United Nations 2030 Sustainable Development Goals. It has its own sustainable development goal (SDG 11): Make cities inclusive, safe, resilient and sustainable.To support implementation of urban activities the WMO inter-programme Urban Expert Team under the Commission for Atmospheric Sciences and Commission for Basic Systems (2018) supported by a dedicated team of urban focal points in the Secretariat developed the Guidance on Integrated Urban Hydro-Meteorological, Climate and Environmental Services (IUS). The needs for integrated urban services (IUS) include information for short-term preparedness (e.g. hazard response and early warning systems), longer-term planning (e.g. adaptation and mitigation to climate change) and support for day-to-day operations (e.g. water resources). The aim is to build urban systems and services that meet the special needs of cities through a combination of dense observation networks, high-resolution forecasts, multi-hazard early warning systems, disaster management plans and climate services. This approach gives cities the tools they need to reduce emissions, build thriving and resilient communities and implement the UN Sustainable Development Goals.WMO with its urban cross-cutting approach is involved in joint UN urban activities for development of and implementation of NUA and SDG 11 with a number of external partners, e.g. UN-Habitat, WHO, ITU, GEO, International Association for Urban Climate (IAUC), etc. The IUS methodology is integrated into more broad Multi-Agency UN system U4SSC: United for Smart Sustainable Cities and its key performance indicators (KPIs) for smart sustainable cities.This presentation provides an overview of the current efforts towards future IUSs on urbanization under climate change undertaken by the WMO and UN international initiatives for building climate smart, sustainable and resilient cities.

ABSTRACTRecent crises exacerbate social, environmental, and economic problems affecting the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and urban resilience. Urgent action is needed to address these issues. The paper aims to (i) broaden the debate on urban resilience and the SDGs and (ii) examine how the interconnection of Urban Spatial Resilience (USR) and the SDGs can contribute to sustainable cities and communities. The research is developed through a literature review and a bibliometric analysis, followed by a quantitative approach using modeling and simulation. The results reveal three critical elements that can impact urban resilience and sustainable development: SDG11, urban spatial structure resilience, and urban spatial form resilience. Other findings indicate that SDG13 and SDG6 have a significant indirect relationship with urban resilience. The study provides policy implications supporting urban resilience and the SDGs.

Assessment methods of urban system resilience: From the perspective of complex adaptive system theory

Enhancing urban system resilience to earthquake disasters: Impact of interdependence and resource allocation

Technological determinism has become a kind of religion for many people since it appears to offer solutions for societal problems as never before in history. Transport is one of the fascinating technology branches developed during the last 200 years. Effortless movement over long distances has become possible for car users as long as cheap fossil energy is available. However, the effect of fast transport on urban structures and society was not taken into account when developing these technical means. Technologists and economists have used indicators for expected benefits of these fast transport modes without taking into account the real system effects on society and urban structures. Plausible assumptions and hopes instead of scientific understanding of the complex system are used in practice. In contradiction to widely held beliefs of transportation planners, there is actually no growth of mobility if counted in number of trips per person per day, no time saving by increasing speed in the system, and no real freedom of modal choice. Modal choice is dependent on physical and other structures, the artificial environment built by urban planners, transport experts and political decisions. The core hypothesis of traditional urban and transport planning ‘growth of mobility’, ‘travel time saving by increasing speed’ and ‘freedom of modal choice’ are myths and do not exist in the real urban and transport system. This is the reason why urban planning and transport planning based on traditional non-scientific assumptions is creating continuously not only more transport problems, but also environmental and social as well as economic problems all over the world, where these principals are applied. Urban transport planning in Europe, understanding the transport system and the solutions are presented in this paper.

The concept of urban resilience has taken a leading edge by incorporating the multiscalar interactions within an urban system, revealing the short- and long-term impacts, spatial dependencies, and inequalities. The issue now is to enable local authorities and urban stakeholders to grasp and apply the resilience approach. Technical networks and urban services supporting urban development (drinking water supply, public transportation, etc.) are an interesting case study to apply the resilience concept. The urban resilience approach, tested with the managers of service provision in the City of Paris, demonstrates the effectiveness of integration and collaboration. First, an autodiagnosis realized with each manager identifies the service dependencies and its capacity for continuous operation in case of disturbance. Then workshops raise manager awareness of their interdependencies and feed the discussion toward technical and organizational solutions in an integrated approach. This macroscopic analysis is then completed by a territorial assessment of urban service resilience. In doing so, the spatial and temporal dimensions emphasize gaps but also margins of manoeuver in managing resilient urban services. Our results show that manager strategies can be focused on protection, adaptation, or recovery of their service. However, these are sometimes contradictory and threaten the resilience of the whole system. Indeed, in highlighting the different strategies set up by managers, the region’s resilience can be discussed at different scales: the urban service, the system of urban services, the City of Paris, and the Parisian metropolis. Then we emphasize the difficulties in applying the resilience concept and suggest solutions to improve the conditions for urban resilience and sustainability.

In the context of rapid urbanization, urban resilience, as a new way of thinking to seek solutions to urban risk crises, has become an important direction and a new development trend in the continued acceleration of urbanization. This study takes the Yangtze River Delta (YRD) as the study object, establishes a comprehensive evaluation index system of urbanization and urban resilience from a multi-dimensional perspective based on the improved entropy value method, and uses the coupling coordination degree (CCD) model, the kernel density estimation method, and the exploratory spatial data analysis (ESDA) method to investigate the spatio-temporal evolution trends of the CCD level of urbanization and urban resilience. Further, the dynamic response relationship of the coupling between the two systems is revealed by the PVAR model. The study results are shown as follows: (1) The urbanization level and the urban resilience level show a box-shaped clustering of overall urbanization values and urban resilience values, with a widening absolute gap between extreme value cities. (2) The kernel density estimates of CCD values for urbanization and urban resilience show an upward trend in the overall level of CCD, with regional integration replacing multi-level differentiation. (3) The level of CCD shows a continuous upward trend in terms of the spatial distribution characteristics of CCD, and the high-class area shows regional integration. (4) The spatial agglomeration trend of CCD continues to develop, reaching a region-wide hot spot agglomeration. (5) The PVAR model indicates that there is a dynamic response relationship between the urbanization system and the urban resilience system. Finally, based on the above research results, this study gives policy recommendations for the coordination and sustainable development of the urbanization system and the urban resilience system, providing some academic references for the relevant departments in the YRD to accelerate urbanization, enhance the urban resilience level, and promote regional integration.

The development of urban resilience is inseparable from the construction of urban infrastructure. As an important lifeline of the city, transportation infrastructure is an important part of improving urban resilience. Studying the coordinated development degree of urban resilience and transportation infrastructure level is related to the future development of the city. On the basis of measuring the urban resilience and transportation infrastructure level in the Yangtze River Delta, this study uses the coupling coordination model and spatial autocorrelation model to explore the spatiotemporal evolution trend of the coupling coordination between urban resilience and transportation infrastructure level. The results show that first, the average development levels of urban resilience and transportation infrastructure are at the middle and lower levels, showing a spatial pattern of “high in the southeast and low in the northwest.” Second, the degree of coupling coordination fluctuates and rises and is in the transition stage from mild imbalance to primary coordination. Finally, the degree of coupling coordination is spatially positively autocorrelated, and the degree of agglomeration shows a stable development trend, but the difference of coordinated agglomeration between cities is expanding. To enhance the security and sustainable competitiveness of the Yangtze River Delta, this study argues that it is urgent to establish the concept of resilient urban development and promote the integration of urban agglomeration transportation infrastructure to promote the coordinated development of urban safety systems and infrastructure. Suggestions were recommended to efficiently improve the urban resilience and transportation infrastructure level in the Yangtze River Delta.

Smart city planning is crucial for enhancing urban resilience, especially with the contemporary challenges of rising urban population and climate change. This study conducts a systematic literature review (SLR) to examine the integration of urban resilience in smart city planning, synthesizing the current literature to identify key components, barriers, and enablers. The study found that technological integration, sustainability measures, and citizens’ participation are critical factors to the effective development of smart cities. The review emphasizes the need for an integrated approach to urban resilience, calling for continued research and collaboration among stakeholders. It highlights how urban sustainability and resilience should be addressed within an urban system and that interdisciplinary work, stakeholder consultation, and public engagement are required. It finally suggests the integration of creativity and diversity in urban planning practices and policies for improving vulnerability to modern-day challenges in urban contexts. It concludes by outlining implications for urban planning practices and policy development, advocating for innovative, inclusive strategies to enhance urban resilience.

Circular Urban Metabolism Framework

Urban climate resilience relies on several factors, but urban socioeconomics are considered as a core bloodstream for urban development and building adaptive capability to overcome urban vulnerability and climate change impacts. The socioeconomic indicators are important parameters in assessing urban resilience level on climate-related natural and man-made disasters. This study aims to explore and address the levels of urban vulnerability and resilience in Siem Reap City, Cambodia by using variables of socioeconomic indicators. The research design of this study was made by adopting the HIGS framework (Hazard-Infrastructure-Governance-Socio-economics) on urban vulnerability assessment. Of these four key components of indicators, this study focuses only on twelve socioeconomic indicators by dividing them into three main components (demographic profile, development, and education-poverty-occupation) for assessing vulnerability and exploring how to build urban climate resilience. Data collection and research conducted using commune database data, key informant interviews and focused group discussion with Sangkats (communes) and relevant government agencies in Siem Reap City. The Siem Reap City is highly vulnerable to climate change impacts and has fair resilience toward urban climate change. Siem Reap City remains high ID Poor people. It has a relatively high number of population (especially children and 60 years old) vulnerable to climate change. In addition, the main occupation in this city retains a high attribution of agricultural production, and it has been impacted by climate change. The balanced development should also be made for the communes (Sangkats) that are vulnerable to climate change impacts, especially the green infrastructure, social services, and job creation and livelihood diversification for vulnerable groups, which help reduce the vulnerability of urban areas to climate threats and also key factors for the enhancing response capacity and adaptation of the city, or scalling up small, more local and city-based climate actions.

This study clarified the structure in which virtual social capital (SC) affects the quality of life (QOL) and promotes urban resilience in a metropolitan area. It has been determined that assistance from neighboring residents and acquaintances is essential for community resilience and is considered one of the critical factors in urban systems' resilience. These social ties among residents are called SC. In today's metropolises, social ties with others are shifting from face-to-face relationships to virtual relationships. In this study, virtual SC is defined as a weak virtual network formed among people through social media, email, telephones, letters, which is less overlapped with networks formed in face-to-face networks. Also, direct communication online positively affects psychological and personal well-being (QOL).
 The case study in this paper examines the Tokyo metropolitan region and Bangkok metropolitan region. A web-based survey was administered among those in the younger generation who communicate daily using online tools, and 193 valid responses were collected. Structural Equation Modeling was used to analyze. This study's hypothesis model is the structure that virtual SC affects urban resilience through the quality of life. The difference in structure was identified as both ordinary time and the period of emergency declaration.
 Virtual SC affected urban resilience through QOL during ordinary times. On the other hand, Virtual SC directly worked towards urban resilience during the period of an emergency declaration. Moreover, the use of media with bridging actors forms rich virtual SC and improves urban resilience. Finally, some recommendations of virtual SC use for urban resilience in a metropolitan area were discussed.

(ProQuest: ... denotes formulae omitted.)1. Introduction.In this paper is addressed the public transport planning problem. This is a process which is usually divided into four phases: network design, timetabling construction, vehicle scheduling, and crew scheduling. Usually, these phases are executed sequentially. Here in the paper, we are tackling the bus timetable construction problem of an urban bus transport network. This is usually accomplished in three steps: first for each scenario (covering a concrete planning period) bus frequencies are calculated for each route in the network, then bus departures are settled for each route in the network based on previously calculated frequencies. This is then adjusted for getting acceptable timetables for planners.The main scientific contribution of this work is the development of an integrated multi-objective mixed integer lineal mathematical model to construct multi-period urban bus timetables, which also allows smooth transitions between adjacent planning periods with different demand.Recently Ibarra-Rojas & Rios-Solis (2012) have shown formally that the timetabling problem is NP-Hard, so we implemented two multi-objective metaheuristics to explore the effectiveness of the proposed model. We designed an experiment for testing the heuristics with generated random instances.The timetabling problem has been tackled in the literature from different approaches. Ceder (2007) proposes an exact methods for creating a timetable with maximal synchronization. Also, Eranki (2004), proposes a model to create timetables with maximal synchronization using time windows. She used a heuristic method to solve the problem, but she did not consider multiple criteria. Also, other authors consider maximization of synchronization as a key objective in urban transport planning. Among them, Paunovic (2013) showed a positive correlation between children blood pressure and road traffic noise, transit density and public transport. Burke (2011) also advocates the importance of taking into consideration passenger transfer as a measure of quality for an urban transport system, which indirectly calls for synchronization maximization. Another important measure of quality for urban transport planning is quality of service from the users' perspective (see Ibeas & Cecin, 2011). Ibeas & Cecin, (2011) concluded that the most important variables when defining quality of public transport from the users' perspective are waiting time, journey time and above all, level of occupancy. Recently, this claim has been a subject of research studies by some researchers. For example, Barra et al (2007) presented a model considering different characteristics of the transport system (passenger requirements, budget constraints, level of service). There are other research works on timetabling problem in which the authors use metaheuristics like GRASP. Among these is Mauttone & Urquhart (2009) who developed a metaheuristic based on GRASP for optimizing simultaneously different objectives for passengers and schedulers.In literature, there are approaches such as Szeto & Wu (2011) that combine two phases of the urban transport process. Szeto & Wu (2011) propose a simultaneously integrated solution for the bus network design and frequency setting problems using a genetic algorithm (GA) that tackles the route network design problem. GA is hybridized with a neighborhood search heuristic which tackles the frequency setting problem. Also in Cipriani et al. (2012), network design and frequency calculation are integrated for optimizing passenger transfer, among other impact measures. There are also approaches for solving two phases sequentially. A good example is Chakroborty (2003) who combines the transit routing and scheduling phases using a genetic algorithm. In his approach, he tries to minimize the transfer time and the waiting time. Another research that combines several phases is the one proposed by Zhao & Zeng (2008). …

This research paper devoted to the urban freight transport planning under sustainable city development. Continued urban population growth, traffic congestions, financial losses because of longer delivery times, harm-ful impact on environmental are highlighted as strong arguments for the freight traffic management in the cities. The article aims to help all stakeholders understand the challenges brought about by freight activities in an urban context, and make the planning process consistent and comprehensive for the city freight transportation system improvement. The brief overview of some recent foreign and native studies in urban transport planning and traffic engi-neering reveals main field of interests for modern researchers. The clear focus of the analysed scientific works di-rected on such aspects in sustainable urban freight transport development as energy and economic efficiency, eco-friendliness, safety, institutional and legal issues of freight transportations. Special attention is paid to the analy-sis of government initiatives in sustainable transport system development of Ukraine. Identification of the main freight transportation features in an urban area is carried out on the initial re-search stage. Each feature has an explanation for better understanding necessity of their usage in the freight transport planning process. The other focus of the research devotes to the description of the stages during urban freight transport planning process. Author attends a deep freight transport demand and supply analysis for a de-termination of the basic freight distribution regularities in an urban context. Therefore, a list of indicators for subsystem of city freight transportation evaluation is presented in the article. The whole set of indicators is divid-ed into economical, operational, environmental, social and general groups of indicators. Moreover, the compo-nents of successful measures implementation for an urban freight transport subsystem improvement are highlight-ed. Financial management, political support, institution, organisation and legal framework condition are consid-ered as the key elements of successful plans and measures implementation. Keywords: planning, sustainable development, freight transport, urban population, authorities.

Prelims