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Australian local governments are increasingly deploying smart city technologies to manage climate-related shocks and chronic stresses, yet implementation often remains fragmented and difficult to embed in routine practice. Many initiatives stall in “pilot-forever” cycles because decision rights, equity safeguards, operational integration, and learning systems are applied inconsistently. This paper introduces the Smart Urban Resilience Framework (SURF), a phase-gated, tier-aware governance framework designed to support the institutionalisation of smart urban resilience through more transparent and evidence-based decision-making. The SURF is grounded in an integrated evidence-to-design synthesis drawing on a systematic review, a comparative analysis of Tier 1 and Tier 2 Australian local government strategies, an in-depth Sydney case study, and stakeholder interviews. Although empirically grounded in Australian local government, the SURF is designed as a governance architecture that may be adapted in comparable municipal settings elsewhere. The framework comprises a staged pathway, two evidence gates, and four concurrent action tracks, supported by enabling layers and traceable evidence tools. The SURF is presented as a practical implementation architecture intended to support more transparent and defensible decisions about funding, scaling, refining, or retiring smart resilience initiatives. In this paper, resilience is operationalised through a service continuity lens, focusing on how digital initiatives can be embedded in governance and delivery systems to support the continuity of essential local government services under stress.
Varzeshi et al. (Sat,) studied this question.