A measurement of community seismic resilience in sub-city districts of Mashhad, Iran

Communities that are more resilient to seismic hazards are often able to retain their functions in a time of crisis and experience faster recovery. This study develops a holistic approach for assessing community seismic resilience in thirteen sub-city districts of Mashhad. Three resilience properties (robustness, resourcefulness, and redundancy) are matched with six community resilience dimensions to construct a Community Seismic Resilience Index (CSRI). The aim of CSRI is to quantify districts’ coping capacities to mitigate the adverse impacts of a hazard, and their adaptive capacities to recover in an efficient and timely manner. The geography of CSRI suggests that there is a division between the east and the west of the city that builds a pattern of spatially segregated resilience to seismic hazards. Based on the findings, urban policies should be directed toward enhancing the robustness of communities and building redundancy into institutional/managerial systems in order to build more resilient communities.