In Europe, river floods have been increasing in frequency and severity. These circumstances require the management of flood risk by integrating new concepts like urban resilience. Nevertheless, urban resilience seems to have no accurate meanings. That is why researchers are primarily concerned with defining resilience. Nevertheless, focus on research object seems to be more important than focus on conceptual debate (Resilience of what? Rather than what is resilience?). Thus the methodology designed here is focused on urban considerations. In fact, a system approach emphasizes technical networks' importance concerning urban resilience. Principles and assumptions applied in this research finally lead to the analysis of how urban networks are able to face natural hazards. In this context, a Web-GIS has been developed for analyzing resistance capacity, absorption capacity and recovery capacity of different technical networks. A first application has been carried out on a French agglomeration in order to analyze road network absorption capacity. This application is very specific but, thanks to this example, it is already possible to highlight the methodology's usefulness.

Le concept de résilience réinterroge la façon de penser le système urbain et ses perturbations. Appliqué à la ville, il peut être défini comme la capacité d'un système urbain à absorber une perturbation et à retrouver ses fonctions à la suite de cette perturbation. Dès lors, l’opérationnalité du concept passerait par la nécessité d’adapter le fonctionnement du système urbain tout comme ses composants aux perturbations potentielles, à reconstruire le système urbain suite à une perturbation majeure ou à définir des modalités de gestion de crise en intégrant la complexité même de la ville. Ainsi le concept de résilience appliqué à la ville semble trouver des traductions opérationnelles, notamment en matière de services urbains, qui répondent également aux objectifs de durabilité. En partant de l’analyse des définitions des deux concepts de durabilité et de résilience appliqués à la ville, l’objectif de cet article est de s’interroger sur la façon dont s’articulent les concepts de résilience et de ville durable puis de proposer des outils et méthodes contribuant à la résilience de la ville dans une optique de durabilité, avant d’en étudier les limites.

Disaster risk information is spatial in nature and Geographic Information Systems (GIS) and Remote Sensing (RS) play an important key role by the services they provide to society. In this context, to risk management and governance, in general, and to civil protection, specifically (termed differently in many countries, and includes, for instance: civil contingencies in the UK, homeland security in the USA, disaster risk reduction at the UN level). The main impetus of this article is to summarize key contributions and challenges in utilizing and accepting GIS and RS methods and data for disaster risk governance, which includes public bodies, but also risk managers in industry and practitioners in search and rescue organizations. The article analyzes certain method developments, such as vulnerability indicators, crowdsourcing, and emerging concepts, such as Volunteered Geographic Information, but also investigates the potential of the topic Critical Infrastructure as it could be applied on spatial assets and GIS and RS itself. Intended to stimulate research on new and emerging fields, this article’s main contribution is to move spatial research toward a more reflective stance where opportunities and challenges are equally and transparently addressed in order to gain more scientific quality. As a conclusion, GIS and RS can play a pivotal role not just in delivering data but also in connecting and analyzing data in a more integrative, holistic way.

On‐going changes in cities caused by rapid urbanisation and climate change have increased both the flood probability and the severity of flooding. Consequently, there is a need for all cities to adapt to climate and socio‐economic changes by developing new strategies for flood risk management. The following risk paradigm shifts from traditional to more integrated approaches, since one of the main emerging tasks for city managers is the development of resilient cities. The concept of resilience is becoming more and more important, despite the many challenges that interfere with its implementation. The goal of this research is to create knowledge on how to operationalise flood resilience at the neighbourhood level through neighbourhood design. A research approach was used and a qualitative analysis tool, the DS3 model, was developed in order to study a particular neighbourhood of HafenCity, in Hamburg. Results show that design measures involving transportation infrastructure, land use (open public spaces) and buildings have been the main contributions to the flood resilience of the neighbourhood.