Urbanization presents significant challenges to disaster management as cities grow and develop, hence increasing their vulnerability to disasters. Disaster resilience is crucial for protecting lives and infrastructure, ensuring economic stability, promoting equality and cohesion, and ensuring the long-term viability of metropolitan regions in these rapidly growing cities. This paper investigates contemporary approaches to creating smart and resilient urban environments through disaster management that emphasize community-based solutions in prioritizing advanced technologies. The key findings of the research include three factors to be accomplished in utilizing technology in community-based disaster management, trust in the crowd, digital divide, and cultural sensitivity. Moreover, the review highlights the significance of the use of smart technologies in improving urban resilience, including but not limited to real-time data-sharing platforms and ML algorithms. Furthermore, it emphasizes the challenges regarding reliability and accuracy in crowdsourced information, stressing the importance of user awareness.

The increasing frequency and severity of disasters in urban areas demand sustainable, smart disaster management strategies to leverage technological advancements. This study provides a comprehensive review of mobile apps for disaster awareness available in the Google Play Store, with a particular emphasis on addressing flood disaster readiness and response. Mobile apps have become indispensable tools for disseminating immediate notifications, facilitating emergency communication, and coordinating response activities. A total of 77 mobile apps in the Google Play Store were identified and evaluated using a systematic search. The evaluation criteria included user ratings, download counts, and key crisis management functionalities such as real-time alerts, emergency contact directories, preparedness checklists, and user reporting capabilities. The findings emphasised the following: (a) the importance of integrating cutting-edge technologies, i.e., AI and IoT, to enhance functionality, accuracy, and capacity in mobile applications; (b) the use of crowdsourcing as a valuable mechanism for enriching inclusive and responsible data; (c) enabling timely updates and fostering community engagement; and (d) establishing agency engagements, gamified elements, and real-time reciprocal communication tools, i.e., push-to-talk features to ensure the long-term sustainability of mobile apps. By incorporating these insights, disaster management apps can significantly enhance community resilience and improve the effectiveness of responding to natural disasters in this digital age.

Mostly, public places are planned and designed by professionals rather engaging the community in the design process. Even if the community engaged, the engagement process was limited to hand drawings, manual mappings, or public discussions, which limited the general public to visualize and well-communicate their aspirations with the professionals. Against this backdrop, this study intends to develop a mobile application called “CityBuildAR”, which uses Augmented Reality technology that allows the end user to visualize their public spaces in a way they want. CityBuildAR was developed by the authors using the Unity Real-Time Development Platform, and the app was developed for an Android Operating System. The app was used to assess community interests in designing open spaces by categorizing participants into three groups: those with limited, average, and professional knowledge of space design. The open cafeteria of the University of Moratuwa, Sri Lanka served as the testbed for this study. The study findings revealed that: (a) Mobile Augmented Reality is an effective way to engage people with limited knowledge in space design to express their design thinking, (b) Compared to professionals, the general public wanted to have more green elements in the public space; (c) Compared to the professionals, the general public who were not conversant with the designing skills found the app more useful to express their ideas. The study guides urban authorities in their placemaking efforts by introducing a novel approach to effectively capture community ideas for creating inclusive public spaces.

Urban agriculture (UA) serves as a vital form of green infrastructure, yet its broader adoption is constrained by institutional fragmentation and power asymmetries. The objective of research is to identify the key actors, their roles, gaps, and interactions, which could influence the potential integration of UA within urban governance and planning processes. Utilizing a sociotechnical systems framework across 73 empirical case studies, this paper categorizes 112 human and organizational actors and 146 non‐human actors and enabling technical systems across 10 thematic areas to better understand UA. The analysis revealed that the capital‐intensive, technology‐dependent UA systems consolidate top‐down control among corporate and statutory elites, whereas low‐tech, open‐ground allotments foster bottom‐up agency. To better integrate UA as green infrastructure in urban development, this study proposes a distributed power architecture centered on connections between Community and User actors, Civil Society and Support actors, Knowledge and Research actors, and Municipal and Local Authorities. Emerging technologies may then serve as potential mechanisms for strengthening these connections and enabling community‐led implementation of UA as sustainable green infrastructure. These four actor cohorts were repeatedly highlighted in the analysis for their synergistic potential to bridge statutory policy, scientific validation, civic advocacy, and everyday local stewardship, while secondary stakeholders provide supporting finance and technical delivery. A systems view of UA actors can assist in understanding the means to systematically reduce information and power gaps between grassroots practitioners and institutional decision‐makers. The developed governance model supports democratic self‐governance, protects urban green commons against development gentrification, and can secure the permanent, equitable adoption of UA across metropolitan landscapes.

Community-Based Research (CBR) requires methods that are participatory, contextually grounded, and capable of recognising community members as legitimate knowledge holders. This paper critically evaluates the appropriateness of Photovoice as a participatory visual method within the CBR principles in a study examining how public spaces influence community social cohesion. A qualitative reflective design was adopted, drawing on three sources of evidence: semi-structured interviews with five research team members, selected participant narratives generated during the Photovoice process, and a post-implementation evaluation with 30 community participants focus group discussions. The findings indicate that Photovoice effectively captured lived experience, local meanings of public spaces, and changing patterns of social interaction. It also supported empowerment, co-learning, capacity building, and recognition of the community as a unit of identity by enabling participants to represent and interpret their own spatial realities. The method generated rich insights into how everyday public spaces foster interaction, care, intergenerational relationships, and collective wellbeing. However, some CBR principles were only partially achieved, particularly sustainability, long-term engagement, and equitable shared decision-making. it was highlighted that participant and researcher biases, ethical considerations, and resource constraints need to be appropriately managed to ensure that Photovoice generates meaningful outcomes. The study makes an original contribution to the body of knowledge by integrating Photovoice with CBR principles to demonstrate how participatory visual methods can operationalise CBR in practice while generating community-driven insights into the social value and transformation of public spaces.

Mostly, public places are planned and designed by professionals rather engaging the community in the design process. Even if the community engaged, the engagement process was limited to hand drawings, manual mappings, or public discussions, which limited the general public to visualize and well communicate their aspirations with the professionals. Against, this backdrop, this study intends to develop a mobile application called “CityBuildAR” which uses Augmented Reality technology that allows the end user to visualize their public spaces in a way they want. CityBuildAR was developed by the authors using the Unity Real-Time Development Platform and the app was developed for an Android Operating System. The app was used to assess community interests in designing open spaces by categorizing participants into three groups: those with limited, average, and professional knowledge of space design. The open cafeteria of the University of Moratuwa served as the testbed for this study. The study findings revealed that: (a) Mobile Augmented Reality is an effective way to engage people with limited knowledge in space design to express their design thinking, (b) Compared to professionals, general public wanted to have more green elements in the public space; (a) Compared to the professionals, the general public who were not conversant with the designing skills found the app more useful to express their ideas. The study guides urban authorities in their placemaking efforts by introducing a novel approach to effectively capture community ideas for creating inclusive public spaces.