Critical infrastructures serve human activities and play an essential role in societies. Infrastructural systems are not isolated but are interdependent with regard to social systems, including those of public health and economic and sustainable development. In recent years, both social and infrastructural systems have frequently been in dysfunction due to increasing natural or human-made disasters and due to the internal and external dependencies between system components. The interconnectedness between social-infrastructural systems (socio-economic systems and technical-infrastructural systems), implies that the damage to one single system can extend beyond its scope. For that reason, cascading dysfunction can occur and increase system vulnerability. This article aims to study the functional interdependencies between social-infrastructural systems and to propose a methodology to analyse and improve the resilience of these systems. Combining Actor Network Theory and the Functional Models approach, the social-infrastructural Interdependence Resilience (SIIR) framework was proposed. To assess the applicability of the approach, the framework was applied to study the interdependence of a social-infrastructural system in the Nantes Metropolis. The studied system was composed of the local Highway Infrastructure (an infrastructural system) and the Emergency Medical Service (a social system). The results (1) show the feasibility of SIIR for investigating the interdependencies of two urban systems, and (2) provide a guideline for decision-makers to improve the functional interdependencies of urban systems.

With the increasing frequency and intensity of extreme climate events in cities, it is essential to develop multi-scale and multi-hazard design tools to ensure urban climate resilience. A designed approach to urban development across spatial scales offers the opportunity to integrate diverse fields to create a strong multidisciplinary knowledge base and avoid fragmented planning approaches. This paper proposes a process-based methodological framework for climate resilient urban design-integrating analysis of climate impact with concerns of local communities. A combined focus on climate impact and co-benefits enables a design process with the ability to promote adaptation and mitigation while also addressing diverse urban challenges and responding to local needs and priorities. The proposed methodological framework is applied in the context of the climate resilient urban redevelopment of the Porte de Montreuil district in Paris, France. The results show that the Porte de Montreuil area is at risk from heat waves as a result of the urban characteristics of the area. However, it is possible to suggest specific design measures that integrate local planning priorities with climate resilient design measures to decrease the risk and improve climate resilience in the area.

In modern urban areas, water management highly depends on the socio-ecological urban water cycle (UWC) that heavily relies on water infrastructures. However, increasing water-related hazards, natural and/or human-based, makes it difficult to balance water resources in the socio-ecological UWC. In the last decade, urban infrastructure resilience has rapidly become a popular topic in disaster risk management and inspired many studies and operational approaches. Among these theories and methods, the “Behind the Barriers” model (BB model), developed by Barroca and Serre in 2013, is considered a theory that allows effective and comprehensive analysis of urban infrastructure resilience through cognitive, functional, correlative, and organisational dimensions. Moreover, this analysis can be a reference to develop actions that improve infrastructure resilience under critical scenarios. Therefore, this study aims to study resilience design actions based on the BB model to achieve socio-ecological water balance and assess the performance of these actions. The study focuses on water management on a neighbourhood scale, which is considered the essential urban unit to study and improve the resilience of critical infrastructures, such as water services. The Part-Dieu neighbourhood in Lyon, France is selected as a case study, and it highlights the need to develop indicators to assess the performance of implemented actions in a structural and global resilience framework, to understand urban systems as complex and dynamic systems to provide decision support, and to strengthen crisis prevention and management perspectives in a dynamic approach.

In coastal cities, the effects of climate change will cause an increase in the intensity and frequency of extreme sea level (ESL). In this scenario, the application of the Coast-RiskBySea model is proposed to assess the economic impacts of ESL on the built environment in three Euro-Mediterranean coastal cities: Naples, Barcelona, and Marseille. The risk (land use-based) is assessed in the GIS environment as a function of the potential direct and tangible economic damages. The results highlight risk scenarios in all three cities with significant economic damages expected, requiring the implementation of climate mitigation and adaptation measures to reduce the current impacts and limit future ones. The simulations highlight the potential of both remote sensing data and GIS systems to carry out homogeneous environmental analyses over wide areas. The results that were obtained are compared with existing works to verify the reliability of the Coast-RiskBySea model.

Urban areas are vulnerable to multiple risks associated with hydro-meteorological hazards (HMHs). The assessment of the climate benefits of implementing nature-based solutions (NBSs) in urban areas, especially in open spaces, is widely recognised and discussed within the scientific literature; however, the quantification of these benefits, in terms of the HMHs reduction, human safety and human well-being, is still a subject of debate. In this context, this contribution proposes a methodological approach that, starting from the analysis of the impacts of coastal flooding and in terms of the potential direct and tangible economic damages, heatwave events and vulnerability of open spaces, proposes the application and assessment of NBSs in terms of the reduction in these impacts. The process was developed in the GIS environment based on the processing of open-source data. The test was conducted in the case study of Naples’ waterfront to identify the potentialities and limitations of the approach. The results showed the contribution of NBSs in reducing the economic damages due to coastal flooding and the improved vulnerability conditions to heatwave events.