ABOUT ISO 37123 - INDICATORS FOR RESILIENT CITIES

Cities are increasingly confronted by shocks which include extreme natural or human made events which result in loss of life and injury, material, economic, and/or environmental losses and impacts. These shocks can include floods, earthquakes, hurricanes, wildfires, pandemics, chemical spills and explosions, terrorism, power outages, financial crises, cyber-attacks, conflicts. A resilient city is also able to manage and mitigate ongoing human and natural stresses in a city relating to environmental degradation (e.g. poor air and water quality), social inequality (e.g. chronic poverty and housing shortages) and economic instability (e.g. rapid inflation and persistent unemployment) that cause persistent negative impacts in a city.

The concept of a resilient city is being embraced by cities globally. Beyond the city level, many national governments, private institutions and international organizations have also adopted resilient city development as a key policy priority. With cities growing in population and density, the level of risk associated with environmental shocks has risen. However, until now, there has been a lack of global coherence around this concept, in particular in terms of two fundamentals:

• A general lack of clarity on the definition of what a “resilient city” truly is and how to measure it.

• A lack of internationally-standardized indicators to measure progress, drive resilient city investment, drive city-to-city learning and create tools for year-over-year benchmarking.