Resilience provides an adaptive approach for dealing with environmental change, natural risks and public health emergencies. Urban spatial resilience is an interpretation of resilience in the spatial dimension. However, studies on urban spatial resilience and the relationship between resilience and urban space are limited. This study tries to understand urban spatial systems and to establish an urban spatial resilience theoretical framework by integrating resilience into urban spaces to reduce urban risks. This article describes urban spatial resilience by identifying a set of urban spatial factors that may affect resilience and by linking spatial elements and resilience characteristics. The theoretical framework of urban spatial resilience has been divided into five dimensions here, urban spatial scale resilience, urban spatial structure resilience, urban spatial form resilience, urban spatial function resilience, and urban spatial network resilience. This study considers the advantages of spatial resilience from landscape ecology and urban resilience from urban studies. As a supplement to existing resilience research, this study provides a new perspective on improving the resilience of urban spaces and reduce urban risks, and guides spatial planning practitioners.

Flood disasters often have serious impacts on cities. Disaster prevention and mitigation schemes for flood disasters must be based on risk assessment. We constructed an indicator system for flood disaster risk assessment from the aspects of hazard factors, sensitivity to the environment, disaster vulnerability, flood disaster prevention, and resilience. Then we add the precipitation factor as a scenario parameter to the assessment of flood disasters, in order to assess the flood disaster risk under annual average precipitation scenarios, multi-year flood season average precipitation scenarios, and large typhoon precipitation scenarios. Xiamen is one of the cities with more serious flood disasters. We select Xiamen as an example and refer to existing indicators of flood disaster assessment. The results show that: (1) the coefficient of variation of flood disasters in Xiamen under the impact of large-scale typhoon precipitation is large; (2) the drainage and flood control capacity of Xiamen is generally insufficient, and the risk in the old city is high; (3) there are many flood-prone locations in Xiamen. Underpass interchanges, underground spaces, and urban villages have become the new key areas for flood control; and (4) the flood risk in the northern mountainous areas of Xiamen is the highest. Based on the assessment results, we further delineate the urban flood control zones and propose corresponding countermeasures. The study expands the research on flood disaster risk assessment, and also provides reference for relevant cities to deal with flood disasters.

Understanding and measuring the relative risk level of a city facing multi-hazards is fundamental to improving its disaster prevention planning and schemes. A comprehensive risk evaluation approach stands at the intersection of risk management and disaster system theory. It is also an important interdisciplinary field of catastrophology, economics, and urban infrastructure planning. We believe that current attempts to define and measure comprehensive urban natural disaster risks have certain limitations. Therefore, we propose an Urban Multi-hazards Risk Assessment Framework (UMRAF) which draws on definitions, methods, and experience from risk management, evaluation of property, the value of statistical life, and disaster system theory. It contains local disaster identification, place-based risk assessment (taking into account more than one hazard at a time), urban anti-disaster capability assessment, and relative composite risk index measurement. In our case study of Xiamen, China, to check the feasibility of our UMRAF, we examined local multi-hazards risk distribution and urban anti-disaster capacity layout. We then expanded and visualised the spatial distribution of the relative composite risk index of each evaluation unit across the city via our analyst tool, thereby helping to tailor measures that can reduce risk at a local level.

Urban disaster risk assessment is the most basic and important part of urban safety development. Conducting disaster prevention and mitigation on the basis of urban disaster risk assessment requires an understanding of the relationship between the city and the natural environment. This enhances the city’s ability to withstand various types of disasters and achieves the development of a safe city. Based on a review of the existing literature, we propose a fuzzy comprehensive evaluation method for urban multi-disaster risk assessment. The multi-disaster risk assessment method includes the identification and screening of urban disasters, the assessment of individual disaster risk, and integrated urban disaster risks, the division of urban comprehensive disaster risks into several risk levels, and the determination of coping strategies. Taking Guangzhou (China) as an example, we determined the major disaster risks faced by Guangzhou, assessed the risks of individual disasters, and finally obtained the results of the comprehensive disaster risk of Guangzhou. Second, we analyzed the relationship between the disaster risk assessment and urban safety development, and proposed countermeasures and recommendations for the development of different disaster risk levels.

The growing densities of human and economic activities in cities lead to more severe consequences when a catastrophe such as an earthquake occurs. This study on urban seismic risk evaluation is carried out from the perspective of the direct loss caused by disasters in urban areas, including the measurement of both the expected direct economic loss and loss of life in the face of characteristic earthquakes. Aiming to estimate, quantify and visualize the earthquake risk in each unit of urban space, this research proposes to assess urban seismic risk by integrating the direct economic loss and the loss of statistical life in a disaster, with consideration of diverse earthquake frequencies. Empirical research of the proposed assessment framework and corresponding models is then conducted to measure urban seismic risk in Xiamen, China. Key findings of the case study include the expected direct economic losses and the expected number of deaths in three characteristic earthquakes, their estimated spatial distributions, the average loss of the value of a statistical life (VSL) of one average local resident and the overall seismic risk distributions in Xiamen.

Since there has been a huge amount of transport infrastructure projects being proposed, planned and constructed over the past decades in China, this article aims to reveal the substantial dynamics of China’s rapid development of urban mega-projects. It analyzes Nantong’s metro project to use it as a case study – how it was being justified, approved and implemented, and what were the key driving forces within the whole process through official justifications and key informant interview materials. The urban metro system is supposedly an approach to achieve urban development objectives, a tool for growth and a way to a better urban life. We find inter-city competition as an underlying driving force that initiates such urban mega-projects with certain weight given to economic indicators in project appraisals within a largely local government-led and public-invested process. Furthermore, domestic economic performance and changing policy interventions also exert significant influence on project approval and long-term project development. Our findings echo some Western literature on mega-projects development and urban competition, while revealing other features and emerging issues relating to project initiation, proposal examination and implementation specific to the Chinese context.