Union means strength: Building city resilience through multistakeholder collaboration

Abstract

A resilience‐focused approach requires the collaboration of a variety of stakeholders including the local government, emergency services, citizens, and companies in adapting to disasters. Currently however, governments fail to encourage stakeholders to take part in the resilience‐building process. To address this challenge, this study presents a maturity model ( MM ) that provides local governments with a sequence of stages and policies to improve the collaboration with stakeholders. The MM was developed in close collaboration with six European cities and was put into practice through a case study in a UK city. The MM made it possible to assess the current stage of the city under study and to implement policies for engaging stakeholders in the resilience‐building process. Finally, challenges associated with the involvement of stakeholders encountered in the city under study are discussed.