Initiative Leads
Dr. Naim Kapucu and Dr. Gurt Ge

The Urban Resilience Initiative (URI) is an interdisciplinary collaborative effort designed to examine the stresses and strains placed upon urban environments to determine best practices and processes to strengthen community resilience, specifically in Central Florida. Developed in fall 2019, URI is co-led by Dr. Naim Kapucu and Dr. Gurt Ge, faculty members in the School of Public Administration at the University of Central Florida. Based in the College of Community Innovation and Education, the School of Public Administration supports and educates students and professionals dedicated to careers in public service.

The goal of the initiative is to create a network of coalitions and collaborations among academic researchers, community partners and stakeholders that strengthen community resilience in Central Florida. URI aims to be a reference of community-and-partnership-driven urban resilience for other urban regions across the world, helping to strengthen the capacity of cities in anticipating and managing risks induced by natural and human-made disasters. We are a research network and enterprise that brings together community partners and academic researchers from social science, science, and engineering.

70%

cities dealing with the effects of climate change
(United Nations High Commissioner of Refugees, 2018)

68%

world’s population projected to be urban by 2050
(United Nations, 2018)

$500B

economic losses annually caused by disasters
(World Bank, 2020)

The Path to Resilience

A definition of urban resilience can provide insights and understanding into complex ideas surrounding sustainability and vulnerability, and is increasingly being used to understand highly complex, dynamic social systems like urban areas. It is important as urban areas today are facing a range of shocks and stresses from both natural and man-made hazards. From rapid population growth, to climate change, to political instability and public health issues, cities are facing amplified challenges that are unlike any they have managed before.

1962 - Thalidomide scandal
1963 - Nuclear Test Ban Treaty
1963 - Vajont reservoir disaster
1967 - Greenpeace is founded
1968 - Paul Erlich: "The Population Bomb"
1969 - UNESCO conference "Man and his Environment
1969 - US National Environmental Policy Act

Components of Urban Resilience

Urban Resilience has a multidimensionality aspect to it. We have grouped together different aspects of resilience into different dimensions which has helped to identify many resources available to the urban community that need to be considered when discussing urban resilience.

Dimensions

  • Financial or Economic
  • Natural or Environmental
  • Infrastructural
  • Human and Cultural
  • Social
  • Institutional or Governance
The involvement of a diverse group of stakeholders and community members in the resilience debate builds trust within the community and share the responsibility of the city’s fate. Public-private partnerships are a fundamental aspect of the resilience process as they are thought to promote trust and to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of the applied strategies.

Sectors

  • Public
  • Nonprofit
  • Communication
  • Community
  • Academic
  • Business

Urban Resilience Advanced Graduate Seminar

Drs. Ge and Martin lead an urban resilience advanced graduate seminar (PAD 6357: Urban Resilience) within the School of Public Administration. It examines a wide range of issues associated with understanding urban resilience from community, environment, infrastructure, security, to planning, and assessment aspects. Specific topics include urban resilience and resilient communities, urban resilience, urban vulnerability, disaster resilience, resilience policy and practice, adaptive planning and hazard mitigation, urban resilience assessment, climate change adaptation, infrastructure interdependency and security, disaster recovery and housing recovery, and interdisciplinary research in urban resilience.

Research and Projects

Research Focus

URI explores the challenges experienced by urban environments due to the stresses and strains placed upon it, specifically in Central Florida. It aims to expand its national and international connections to seek potential collaborations and increase its sphere of influence.

Publications

[Move URI White Paper to STARs]

Current Projects

Some members of the initiative have been awarded with a multiyear NSF-funded project to leverage existing community partnerships and resources and evaluate the state-of-the-art Information Technology (IT) applications in data generation, collection, analysis and integration applied to community resilience to natural disasters at a regional level. The team will investigate the partnerships among public, private and nonprofit sector entities through the big data applications in these contexts and multiple stakeholder groups will be studied, including government officials, business operators, and nonprofits managers, particularly how they collaborate and communicate as a group to make timely and effective decisions to strengthen community resilience to natural disasters. The project builds on the expertise of an interdisciplinary team with synergistic contributions of emergency management, urban and regional planning, public administration, geographic information science (GIS), computer science, civil engineering, and operations management.

Responding to recent events, URI has also initiated dialogs and discussions to work with funding agencies and community partners to begin research projects and apply to competitive funding in high-impact challenges that urban areas across the world currently face such as the impact of COVID-19 and the health international crises in the touristic sector and the management of large influxes of environmental migrants.

Upcoming Events

Check back later for upcoming events.

URI Events

URI holds monthly meetings and various workgroup sessions to bring together leaders in urban resilience to share ideas, collaborate, and conduct research. URI has also participated in the 15th annual Public Administration Research Conference hosted by the Center for Public and Non-Profit Management at UCF.

Research Collaboration Meetings

Date and time to be announced
via Zoom
If you would like to attend this meeting, please contact us.

URI Workgroups

  • Environmental Migration Workgroup
  • COVID-19 Synthesis Workgroup
  • Urban Tourism Resilience Workgroup.

Leading Scholar Lecture Series

Details TBD