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1. A critical assessment of selected urban resilience decision-support tools in the United States

   https://doi.org/10.1016/j.compenvurbsys.2025.102352  

   Praharaj, Sarbeswar (October 2025, Computers, Environment and Urban Systems)

   The concept of resilience has gained increasing prominence in research and policy discussions. Various web-based data visualization tools have been developed to communicate hazard risks and make complex climate models more accessible to the community. This article presents a comprehensive assessment of 30 selected resilience tools across the U.S. to examine their decision-support capabilities. We conducted an extensive search to shortlist tools from diverse sectors, including public, private, non-profit, and academic organizations, addressing different hazard contexts, such as floods, heatwaves, wildfires, storms, infrastructure failures, and land degradation. We designed and applied a broad-based analytical framework to assess the tools' performance, encompassing the comprehensiveness of indicator systems, robustness of design and visual communication, scenario planning to handle uncertainties, participatory and interactive approaches, and decision-support and action-enabling characteristics. Several notable findings emerge from this study: (a) resilience tools overwhelmingly include environmental datasets while overlooking social and institutional dimensions, necessary to capture the complexity of urban systems; (b) minimal integration of city and neighborhood level information poses barriers to localized assessments and adaptation planning; (c) while the tools effectively communicate vulnerability, future innovations in scenario-based planning utilizing AI, real-time data, and predictive modeling capabilities are needed to plan for a dynamic and uncertain future; and (d) these tools must foster an interoperable design for users to combine new data layers to adjust their resilience assessments to local contexts. This study outlines future research and development avenues, providing resilience planners and decision-makers with a strategic foresight to enhance computer-based applications for assessing, planning, and managing disaster risks to human and urban systems. 

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2. Urban planning and IPCC-like city assessments integration for climate-resilient cities

   https://doi.org/10.1177/23998083251330940  

   Ye, Xinyue; Yigitcanlar, Tan; Xu, Yangyang; Head, Monique; Hang, Yun; Sanchez, Tom; Gong, Wenjing; Niyogi, Dev (March 2025, Environment and Planning B: Urban Analytics and City Science)

   The rapidly intensifying effects of climate change on urban settlements demand that cities move to the forefront of resilience planning. Climate extremes, from heatwaves to flooding, are increasingly testing the adaptability limits of urban systems and the vulnerability of their populations. Recognizing the unique position of cities, the IPCC’s seventh assessment cycle has prioritized urban areas in its upcoming Special Report on Climate Change and Cities. The IPCC report underscores the potential of cities to act as agents of climate adaptation and provides a framework for cities to build climate-resilient systems. Cities are positioned to pioneer practical, integrative solutions that blend climate sciences with urban planning, establishing frameworks that align economic growth, health equity, environmental sustainability, social justice, and effective governance. This opinion piece explores how cities, by positioning themselves as hubs for innovation, policy reform, and community collaboration, can transform climate vulnerabilities into opportunities for community resilience and sustainability, especially by becoming more-than-human cities, setting examples on the global stage. 

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3. A Community Planning Approach to Green Infrastructure and Hazard Mitigation

   https://doi.org/10.66752/1077-5315.5716  

   Salazar, Kara; Walker, Daniel; McKillip, Carrie (July 2026, Journal of Extension)

   As communities seek to increase their resilience to climate change and natural hazards, integrating mitigation and adaptation solutions into local planning has become essential. Purdue Extension, the University of Illinois Extension, and Illinois–Indiana Sea Grant developed a program, funded by the Extension Disaster Education Network, which supports community-based updates to hazard mitigation and resilience planning, with an emphasis on green infrastructure. This paper highlights the lessons we learned after implementing the program in Hancock County, Illinois, and LaPorte, Indiana, and the toolkit we created, which provides engagement and education techniques, planning processes, and other resources to Extension professionals working in community development, planning, and green infrastructure. 

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4. Combining AI with urban resilience planning: A bibliometric analysis of literature

   https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cacint.2026.100342  

   Praharaj, Sarbeswar (March 2026, City and Environment Interactions)

   The rise of artificial intelligence (AI) technologies shows great promise for reshaping urban planning and decision-making processes. While recent studies have examined AI implications broadly for local government, research remains limited in understanding its implications for urban resilience planning for climate change adaptation and mitigation. This study presents a comprehensive bibliometric analysis of 3941 publications spanning 1975 to 2024 to address this knowledge gap. The goal of this study is to examine the trends, evolution, and modalities of AI integration in urban resilience research and identify the key knowledge clusters developing in this critical area. Several notable findings emerge from this study: (a) AI adoption in the urban resilience field significantly expanded in the last decade, ushering in a new era of algorithmic urban planning; (b) AI applications in urban resilience studies are primarily geared towards climate change-related disaster risk mitigation, critical infrastructure management, environmental resilience, land use and urban growth management, and improved health outcomes; (c) the most prolific use cases of AI technologies are observed in the areas of extreme heat mitigation, flood forecasting, traffic congestion and air pollution management, and scenario-based generative adaptive urban design; (d) human, cultural, organizational, and participatory dimensions of urban resilience, including issues of equity, algorithmic bias, and governance, remain significantly underexplored in the current literature; and (e) while AI technologies are used effectively for enhancing rapid simulation, prediction, forecasting, and automated decision-support capabilities, greater emphasis on algorithmic bias and climate uncertainty is necessary to plan for a dynamic and equitable future. This study outlines future research and development avenues, providing resilience planners and policymakers with strategic foresight to advance AI-based applications for urban resilience. 

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5. Modeling of Inter-Organizational Coordination Dynamics in Resilience Planning: A Multilayer Network Simulation Framework

   Li, Q. (January 2019, ASCE International Conference on Computing in Civil Engineering 2019)

   This paper proposed and tested a multilayer framework for modeling network dynamics of inter-organizational coordination in resilience planning among interdependent infrastructure sectors. Each layer in the network represents one infrastructure sector such as flood control, transportation, and emergency response. Coordination probability was introduced to approximate the inconsistent coordination between organizations, based on which the intra-layer or inter-layer link removal was conducted and inter-organizational coordination efficiency within and across infrastructure sectors was hereby unveiled. To test the proposed framework, a multilayer collaboration network of 35 organizations from five infrastructure sectors in Harris County, Texas, was mapped based on a survey of Hurricane Harvey. The analysis results showed that before Hurricane Harvey, coordination among flood control, transportation, and infrastructure development sectors lacked essential integration to foster robust resilience plans. The proposed framework enables an assessment of coordination efficiency among organizations involving in resilience planning and provides an indicator for urban resilience measurement. 

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