Urban Resilience for Emergency Response and Recovery ― Fundamental Concepts and Applications

This book introduces the concepts of Resilience-Based Design (RBD) as an extension of Performance–Based Design. It provides different state-of-art methodologies to evaluate resilience and clarifies the difference between resilience, vulnerability and sustainability.
First the focus is on describing the different types of uncertainty which will appear in the resilience evaluation. This is followed by an entire chapter dedicated to the analytical and experimental recovery functions. Then, starting from the definition of resilience provided by MCEER, an extension of the methodology is provided introducing the seven dimensions of Community Resilience. The seven dimensions are summarized with the acronym PEOPLES. They are: Population and demographics, Environmental/Ecosystem, Organized Governmental Services, Physical infrastructures, Lifestyle and Community Competence, Economic Development, Socio-Cultural Capital. For each dimension, components and subcomponents are defined and the related indices are provided. This book emphasizes the physical infrastructure dimension. It provides several examples of applications for the transportation, hydraulic, gas and electric network. The problem of interdependencies and the domino effect is also taken in account during the analysis. Finally, one chapter focuses on the different methodologies to improve disaster preparedness and the engineering mitigation strategies. The last chapter describes the different computer platforms available in the market to evaluate Community Resilience.

The book serves as introduction to the concept of Resilience-Based Design with some advanced applications for specialists. No prerequisite knowledge is necessary in order to understand the book. The Appendix complements information, related for example to the probabilistic concepts.

The readers of the book will comprise graduate students, young engineers and researchers who are interested in the topic. In addition, the book can be used as supplementary text in graduate level courses in Disaster Resilience.