Storm Resilience of Chinese Cities: Ranking and Analysis

Abstract

In recent years, many cities in China have been hit frequently by storms and floods, leading to an increase in the attention of the academic circle and the general public to the resilience of cities. Based on the IPCC climate risk assessment framework, this paper creates a storm resilience index for cities with indicators such as storm disaster risk and city adaptability. It then ranks provincial capitals, municipalities, and pilot cities of the Sponge City Program and the Climate Resilient City Program in China by their storm resilience and divides these cities into the three categories of high-resilience, medium-resilience, and low-resilience cities. The resilience evaluation methods used here and the results thus obtained can be used by researchers and decision-makers to increase public attention to disaster risks faced by large and medium-sized cities in China during the urbanization process across the country.

Jianqing Zhai, associate research fellow at the National Climate Center of China, specializing in climate change impact assessment; Yan Zheng, associate research fellow at the Institute for Urban and Environmental Studies, Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, specializing in climate change economics; Ying Li, associate research fellow at the National Climate Center of China, specializing in climate change impact assessment.