Tools for managing urban environments

A number of different Resilience Diagnostic tools exist. This section describes some of them.

The Reimagine 2.0 Diagnostics Profile (R2DP) developed by the Principle Consultant at Risk Insight Consulting provides a holistic review of an urban environment using a systems approach. Outputs  map to SDG global indicators, via a set of urban indicators. An overview of the approach of the R2DP is available on the riskeffectiveness.com website.

Developed by Arup and updated in late 2024, with support by The Rockefeller Foundation, the City Resilience Framework and supporting Index is based on five years of research and testing. The Index has been designed to enable cities to measure and monitor the multiple factors that contribute to their resilience. Its primary purpose is to diagnose strengths and weaknesses and measure relative performance over time.  

UN-Habitat, through its Urban Resilience Hub, has developed the City Resilience Profiling Tool (CRPT) to be a robust and comprehensive approach for cities to build their resilience.

The Diagnostic and Planning Tool (DPT), which was released in Feb 2021 by the UN Capital Development Fund (CDF), an autonomous, voluntarily funded UN organisation that is affiliated with the UNDP on the UN-Habitat Urban Resilience Hub. 

The DPT focuses on two main points: (1) to help cities understand the strengths and weaknesses of their institutional and operating arrangements and assess the structure and functioning of their economy and economic performance/standing linked to vulnerability and resilience; and (2) to define a process for the design and implementation of plans/strategies to address the identified gaps, accelerate better recovery and improve long-term resilience.

This global toolbox is designed to guide and support local governments and urban groups to develop inclusive and integrated urban planning processes, with a participatory and incremental methodology that adapts to their needs and local context.

This 3-step resilience tool developed by a group of researchers in Europe, provides an urban diagnostic tool that, the authors state: (1) distils resilience principles and narratives that provide a comprehensive picture of the different pathways that resilience-building could take, and (2) makes explicit and facilitating reflection on the choices embedded in planning for urban resilience. 

The resilience roadmap is designed to help make cities resilient with a unique set of goals and commitments organised in three stages: Stage A, Stage B, or Stage C.

Developed with / for the World Government Summit, this self-assessment tool uses a 1-100 scale to provide estimated scores across 3 pillars (hazards, vulnerabilities, and institutional capacities).

The World Bank Urban Resilience Assessment (URA) is a framework for carrying out urban risk assessment, and to strengthen coherence and consensus in how cities can plan for natural disasters and climate change. 

This UNESCO document is a manual on urban water body diagnostic tool, as an assessment instrument for effective management of urban water bodies.

In the face of climate change and the impact that urban heat, cold, flooding, storms and other events are having, various tools and support have been published...

This CDP document provides a summary of the key learnings from CDP’s capacity-building programme, additional case studies and resources, and is intended as a training guide for cities on conducting their climate risk and vulnerability assessment.

CURB is an interactive tool to help cities and towns take action on climate by allowing them to map out different action plans and evaluate their cost, feasibility, and impact.

CRAFT is a reporting framework for cities to perform robust and consistent reporting of local climate hazards, impacts and risks.

The Getting to Zero Resource Hub is an open-source collection of over 300 zero energy and zero carbon resources across seven different topic areas: design & development, embodied carbon, local governments toolkit, codes & policy, residential, and schools.

This tool calculates a maximum carbon budget for a designated area, plus projected emissions reduction pathway, interim carbon budgets and average emissions reduction rate.

DUCT is a set of specific computational models for Singapore, each representing an urban element of interest (e.g., buildings, traffic, air conditioning, microclimate 

This 3-part, introductory webinar series by NASA's Applied Sciences division provides an overview of the Earth Observations Toolkit for Sustainable Cities and Human Settlements, which is an online knowledge resource that shares ready-to-use Earth observation data sets and tools. 

As the CURE framework emphasises, successful and sustainable change in urban environments depends on meaningful community and citizen feedback. What advice and tools exist to help municipal authorities to achieve this...?

The CitizenLab Toolbox is a comprehensive package for authorities to leverage to engage with their citizens.

This piece offers advice and guidance on placemaking...

As part of the work towards making urban environments better places, a Suredis app mock-up has been developed. More details about this app are available on the Suredis app mock-up portal page.

This app is coordinated by Walk21 Foundation, in partnership with Alstom, City of Lisbon and EIT Climate KIC. It builds on the success of earlier versions that have already helped children in Colombia and Rwanda, women in Ireland, and public transport users in Lagos, Belgrade, Cairo and Lusaka benefit from public space upgrades after sharing their walking experiences.