Contributions of green infrastructure to enhancing urban resilience

TLDR

Urban resilience planning has made progress integrating green infrastructure, yet further inclusive and balanced use alongside traditional grey infrastructure is still required. The paper reviews resilience engineering and green infrastructure tools to show how GI can enhance urban resilience and maintain critical system functionality, aiming to help practitioners make safer decisions. The authors examine five key challenges—standards, regulation, socio‑economic factors, financeability, and innovation—and discuss globally adopted, context‑appropriate, socially inclusive solutions. This research was conducted under the Resilience Shift initiative to transform resilience practice in critical infrastructure sectors.

Abstract

After briefly reviewing key resilience engineering perspectives and summarising some green infrastructure (GI) tools, we present the contributions that GI can make to enhancing urban resilience and maintaining critical system functionality across complex integrated social–ecological and technical systems. We then examine five key challenges for the effective implementation of GI that include (1) standards; (2) regulation; (3) socio-economic factors; (4) financeability; and (5) innovation. We highlight ways in which these challenges are being dealt with around the world, particularly through the use of approaches that are both context appropriate and socially inclusive. Although progress surmounting these challenges has been made, more needs to be done to ensure that GI approaches are inclusive and appropriate and feature equally alongside more traditional 'grey' infrastructure in the future of urban resilience planning. This research was undertaken for the Resilience Shift initiative to shift the approach to resilience in practice for critical infrastructure sectors. The programme aims to help practitioners involved in critical infrastructure to make decisions differently, contributing to a safer and better world.