Applying the Urban Systems Abstraction Hierarchy as a Tool for Flood Resilience.

Climate change will mean cities are exposed to more frequent short‐term shocks such as floods. City‐scale resilience is achieved by understanding how these shocks interact with longer‐term stressors (e.g., social inequality). The Urban Systems Abstraction Hierarchy (USAH) has been developed for this purpose. In this paper, Glasgow (UK) is used as a case study application, to demonstrate how resilience theory can be operationalized through the application of the USAH. Results demonstrate how the USAH can quantify interdependencies between tangible physical entities in the city and intangible outcomes that monitor city stressors, and specifically how these outcomes change in response to a 1:200‐year fluvial flood return period in Glasgow. Resilience concepts such as multifunctionality, redundancy and diversity are applied to interpret the results and their implications for longer‐term resilience in Glasgow. The findings from the application of the USAH show that the outcome Social equality and equity is influential for longer‐term resilience in Glasgow, whilst Reliable communications and mobility is an important outcome for flood resilience. Plain Language Summary: Flood hazards are projected to increase under climate change. Understanding how flood exposure interacts with the urban environment is important for longer‐term resilience planning. A resilience tool called the Urban Systems Abstraction Hierarchy models how city resources (such as train stations, parks, hospitals) enable processes which aggregate over different scales to enable resilient outcomes (such as social equality). In this paper, the tool is applied to Glasgow (UK) and modified for a flood hazard. Interaction analysis reveals which urban processes, tasks and outcomes are impacted by a flood through the application of resilience concepts. Applying the tool to a case study provides a fresh perspective on how cities might respond to hazards, and enables an interdisciplinary framework for resilience planning. Key Points: A resilience tool is applied to capture functional interdependencies between system components in Glasgow across scalesResults show how these interdependencies change as a result of flood exposure, impacting longer‐term resilient outcomesA new perspective is provided for applying resilience theory in flood management [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]