How flood risk management projects can improve urban resilience: a combined assessment approach of functional resilience and adaptive capacity

Flooding poses a major challenge to urbanised areas around the world. Increasing resilience istherefore key, especially in low-lying coastal areas. To assess to what extent and why flood riskmanagement projects improve urban resilience, we developed an approach that combines anassessment of impacts on an area’s functional resilience and the adaptive capacity of citizens.Application of the approach to the Dudley Creek flood remediation project in Christchurch,New Zealand, shows that the project had a positive impact on the area’s resilience. Yet, if theproject had paid more attention to combining hard infrastructure interventions with citizenengagement, its positive impact would have been higher. This study confirms the relevance ofcombining engineering and social perspectives on urban resilience, both in assessing resilienceand in designing flood risk management projects. Practitioners are invited to use the frame-work to design projects that improve an urban area’s resilience in a holistic manner.