City Resilience Diagnostics & Tools
A number of different Resilience Diagnostic tools exist. This section describes some of them.
The Reimagine 2.0 Diagnostics Profile (R2DP)
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.
The Arup City Resilience Index
Developed by Arup and supported by The Rockefeller Foundation, the City Resilience 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.
The UNCDF Diagnostic & Planning Tool
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.
The City Resilience Profiling Tool (by UN-Habitat)
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.
A Diagnostics tool for policymaking on urban resilience
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.
MCR2030 Resilience Roadmap - Stage Assessment
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.
PwC Strategy& Urban Resilience Tool
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).
World Bank Urban Resilience Assessment
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.
UNESCO Urban Water Body Diagnostic Tool
This UNESCO document is a manual on urban water body diagnostic tool, as an assessment instrument for effective management of urban water bodies.
City Resilience Indices
A number of Urban Resilience Indices exist. This section describes some of them.
Global Power City Index by Mori-M
The Global Power City Index (GPCI) evaluates and ranks the major cities of the world according to their “magnetism,” or their comprehensive power to attract people, capital, and enterprises from around the world.
Urban Environment & Social Inclusion Index
The Urban Environment and Social Inclusion Index (UESI) uses high-resolution, large-scale data to reveal how cities perform at the intersection of environment and social equity.
Air quality and pollution city ranking (by IQAir)
Air quality in cities is a major focal point, and it is of course related to many aspects of the urban system. This live daily feed by IQAir provides an overview of city air quality.
The home page of IQAir provides an interactive map of your regional area's air quality.
The Resilient Cities Index 2023
The Resilient Cities Index was developed by Economist Impact and supported by Tokio Marine Group to help policymakers and stakeholders understand risk and design effective policies for urban resilience.
Climate Action & Earth observations
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...
The CURB tool (AECOM, World Bank et al) 2016
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.
The CRAFT tool (Arup and C40)
CRAFT is a reporting framework for cities to perform robust and consistent reporting of local climate hazards, impacts and risks.
Getting to Zero resource hub
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.
The Tyndall methodology of measuring carbon budgets
This tool calculates a maximum carbon budget for a designated area, plus projected emissions reduction pathway, interim carbon budgets and average emissions reduction rate.
The DUCT (Digital Urban Climate Tool) - a Singapore initiative
DUCT is a set of specific computational models for Singapore, each representing an urban element of interest (e.g., buildings, traffic, air conditioning, microclimate
ARSET - Earth Observations Toolkit for Sustainable Cities and Human Settlements
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.
Tools for the Built Environment
The Built Environment covers many different areas and aspects. This section provides a few tools and services that exist for sustainable buildings, including ratings tools and healthy buildings.
Green Building Rating Tools
Green Building Councils, which are members of the WorldGBC global network, develop and administer many of the world’s ratings tools. The World Green Building Council provides a summary and overview of a wide range of them...
The EDGE Tool, by IFC (a part of The World Bank)
EDGE (“Excellence in Design for Greater Efficiencies”) is a free software, a green building standard, and an international green building certification system.
The DGNB Certification System
DGNB is the abbreviation (in German) for the German Sustainable Building Council. The DGNB Certification System is based on the three central sustainability areas of ecology, economy and sociocultural. It exists to make sustainable construction applicable in a practical manner, measurable and thus comparable.
Arup & Ellen Macarthur Foundation Circular Buildings Toolkit
This circular design framework provides a way to future-proof a building project for circularity. The principles of the circular economy have been translated into a prioritised set of strategies and actions relevant for real estate projects.
Healthy Buildings Index
Developed in the Netherlands by bba indoor environmental consultancy and DGMR, the Healthy Buildings Index provides guidance on how to design, build and renovate buildings in a healthy way, including how to obtain a WELL certificate.
The WELL Building Standard
The WELL Building Standard™ version 2 (WELL v2™) is a vehicle for buildings and organizations to deliver more thoughtful and intentional spaces that enhance human health and well-being.
GRESB Real Estate Assessment
The Assessment offers real estate managers highly relevant and validated ESG data and powerful analytical tools to benchmark ESG performance, identify areas for improvement and engage with investors.
SAVi (Sustainable Asset Valuation) Tool
IISD’s Sustainable Asset Valuation (SAVi) demonstrates why sustainable infrastructure can deliver better value-for-money for citizens and investors.
Tools for engaging the community & citizens
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...?
CitizenLab Toolbox
The CitizenLab Toolbox is a comprehensive package for authorities to leverage to engage with their citizens.
Playbook for Inclusive Placemaking
This piece offers advice and guidance on placemaking...
The Suredis app concept
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.
Games & Challenges
Providing people with games and interactive tools to help them understand and work out how to play their part towards improving urban environments can be a valuable method of engagement.
Can you fix Smogtown?
This interactive website from Bloomberg challenges you to make decisions to improve an urban environments, and to gain a window into how hard it is for an elected official to get to net zero, and at what cost...
Can you reach net zero by 2050?
This website from the Financial Times asks us to assess our impacts on climate change...
Would carbon food labels change the way you shop?
This website from the Financial Times allows us to look at the emissions involved in our choice of food types...
Using Minecraft for urban development
UN-Habitat has been working with Mojang, the makers of Minecraft, since 2012 on an innovative programme called Block by Block. Through Block by Block, UN-Habitat uses Minecraft as a community participation tool in the design of urban public spaces.