Evaluation of urban resilience in the post-COVID-19 period: A case study of the Yangtze delta city group in China

Abstract

The coronavirus disease 2019 outbreak poses a new test for improving the resilience of cities in the face of public health emergencies, and a scientific evaluation of urban resilience is a key step towards improving such resilience. This study uses the post-pandemic period as the research perspective to establish an evaluation index system comprising six dimensions, namely infrastructure, ecological, social, economic, information elements and technology environment. The study also uses a combination of weighting and grey correlation Technique for Order of Preference by Similarity to Ideal Solution comprehensive evaluation method to empirically analyse the urban resilience of 27 cities in the Yangtze River Delta city group. The study found that significant spatial distribution differences exist in urban resilience. Moreover, the higher-, high- and medium-resilient cities are mostly located on the eastern coast of the Yangtze River Delta in Jiangsu and Zhejiang Province, whereas the lower- and low-resilient cities are mainly located in the inland area of Anhui Province. In addition, different aspects of resilience exist, which are shortcomings for each city. The above results indicate that the model is valuable for evaluating urban resilience in the post-pandemic period, and thus, the model can help policymakers formulate proposals to effectively improve urban resilience.