Towards Resilience: Energy Efficiency in Urban Communities - Case study of New Borg El Arab City in Alexandria, Egypt

Abstract

Energy demands is one of the most important challenges for the future of urban communities and its built environment. Hence, the resilience of energy in urban communities is one of the effective concepts used to face the energy crisis fact due to the intensive consumption of energy. In this context, the paper is concerned with reviewing the previous literature for urban energy. resilience principles and energy-built environment frameworks by specialized international organizations and also studying the experiences of two top ranked international resilient cities. This paper proposes an energy resilient built environment conceptual framework in order to better recognize and examine the complicated problems of resilient and energy efficient urban communities. An analytical approach was applied for the current situation of New Borg El Arab City in Alexandria, Egypt using the proposed framework for measuring the resiliency level in the built environment, then applying an AHP method for determining the priorities of its built environment components, which need to be developed in order to achieve a resilient city. Thus, the overall goal is to provide a model to city planners and decision-makers that could enable them to plan for adaptable urban communities to be more resilient towards energy vulnerability.