An evaluation framework for resilience-oriented planning

The ability of a system to absorb, recover from and successfully adapt to stressing circumstances can be defined as "resilience". To make cities more resilient toward natural disasters, several international initiatives recommend to consider the risk management not only in emergency conditions. The identification of characteristics that make resilient the cities toward natural disasters and the connection between the resilience goals and the risk management phases (mitigation, preparedness, response, recovery) are the main purposes of the framework implemented in the present work. At this aim, we considered the city as complex, dynamic, self-organizing system, continuously changing under the pressure of perturbing internal or external factors. The framework, structured in a Geographic Information System, is useful at different territorial management scales and can host many types of data. Starting from a critical review of international frameworks, focused on the resilience, four drivers (economic, social, environmental and institutional), several driver descriptors (number: 15) and sub-drivers (number: 36) were identified to improve the resilience and to manage the territory during the risk management phases. This frame allows to overcome the sectorial approaches of territorial management promoting the integration of resilience goals (prevent, prepare for, cope with, respond to, and recover from) and of risk management phases (mitigation, preparedness, response, recovery) into ordinary planning tools.