Cities and built environment
Cities concentrate exposure, assets and people, and they hold the levers that most change risk: land-use plans, building codes, drainage, transport and local emergency services.
- Institution
- The Global Centre for Risk and Innovation (GCRI)
- Service level
- R0: information and enquiries
The short answer.
Cities and the built environment as a field of risk covers how urban form, buildings, housing, mobility and services concentrate exposure, and how urban planning and design reduce it. In the Nexus Consortium it is studied as science at GCRI by Critical Infrastructure as well as Cities and Built Environment; this gateway links those platforms and the methods they share.
The field, seen three ways.
Governance and dialogue
No platform yet in this field.
Financial understanding
No platform yet in this field.
Risk built in faster than it is reduced.
Urban growth in hazard-prone land, informal settlement on slopes and floodplains, and heat islands that amplify heat waves create risk that persists for the lifetime of the buildings. The planning decision is the cheapest point of control; the retrofit is the most expensive. Urban risk analysis therefore links hazard maps to zoning, code enforcement and the distribution of who lives where.
- Pluvial flooding exceeding drainage designed to older rainfall statistics.
- Urban heat, unevenly distributed by tree cover, housing quality and access to cooling.
- Seismic vulnerability of non-engineered and pre-code buildings.
- Dependence of city services on regional networks outside municipal control.
Urban resilience frameworks.
| Framework or body | What it governs or supplies |
|---|---|
| Making Cities Resilient 2030 and the UNDRR Disaster Resilience Scorecard for Cities | Self-assessment across governance, risk understanding, planning and response |
| ISO 37123 | Indicators for resilient cities |
| New Urban Agenda (UN-Habitat) | Planning and adequate housing commitments |
| National building codes and the Eurocodes | Structural design against hazard loads |
City and region.
- Infrastructure: utilities and transport.
- Society: inequality in exposure and recovery.
- Coasts: coastal cities and subsidence.
The science sits on Cities and Built Environment; methods start from structural engineering and urban transport engineering.
The methods behind the field.
- Reliability and resilience engineering
- Systems engineering
- Network science and contagion
- Sensors, IoT and observation networks
- Communications and network technology
- Optimization and operations research
- Space systems and satellite services
- Energy generation, storage and grid technology
- Power systems engineering
- Structural and earthquake engineering
- Urban and transport engineering
- Process and industrial safety engineering
- Geospatial information systems
- Spatial statistics and geostatistics
- Social and behavioural science
- Earth and geophysical science
- Water and environmental engineering
Terms used on this page.
Each term as this page uses it. Where a standard-setting body defines the term, the wording follows that body.
| Term | Definition |
|---|---|
| Urban resilience | The measurable ability of an urban system and its inhabitants to maintain continuity through shocks and stresses while adapting and transforming. |
| Built environment | The human-made surroundings in which people live and work, including buildings, streets, utilities and public spaces. |
| Urban heat island | The tendency of cities to be warmer than their surroundings because built surfaces store heat and vegetation is scarce. |
| Informal settlement | A residential area whose inhabitants lack secure tenure, often without basic services or compliance with planning rules. |
Where this page's references lead.
The bodies and documents this page is read against. Status and editions change; each link goes to the issuing body.
- Making Cities Resilient 2030 and the Disaster Resilience Scorecard for Cities (UNDRR)
- ISO 37123:2019 Indicators for resilient cities (ISO)
- UN-Habitat urban data and the New Urban Agenda
- Global Human Settlement Layer (European Commission JRC)
- Eurocodes structural design standards (European Commission JRC)
Questions and answers.
Why does GCRI host field gateways?
Around GCRI.
Start with an enquiry.
The current service level is R0: information and enquiries. An enquiry receives a reference and names the next step; applications, payments, compute allocations and registrations open only when their team, terms and review capacity exist.