Assessing urban resilience to public health disaster using the rough analytic hierarchy process method: A regional study in China

Abstract

In the context of frequent occurrences of disasters worldwide, disaster-coping capability is imperative for risk reduction and contemporary emergency management. The global COVID-19 pandemic since 2020 has further highlighted the significance of resilience construction at different geographical scales. Overall, the conceptual cognition of resilience in disaster management covers multiple elements and has diverse yielding on regional assessment. This study assesses the local resilience to the public health disaster in the prefecture-level cities, focusing on two dimensions consisting of vulnerability and capability in the targeted provincial region of Jiangsu in China. To this end, based on the vulnerability-capability framework, the Rough Analytic Hierarchy Process (Rough AHP) method was applied to the resilience assessment. Drawing upon the criteria derived from literature, the criteria weights were determined with the RAHP method and we assessed urban resilience with census data. In addition, the hierarchical factors contributing to urban resilience were determined using robustness analysis. This research provides constructive ideas for regional disaster reduction and contributes to the government's capability to improve urban resilience.

Keywords

• Urban resilience
• Vulnerability-capability
• Public health disaster
• Rough Analytic Hierarchy Process
• Jiangsu Province
• China