Operationalising Resilience within Planning Practice: Towards an Online Decision Support Model

Over the past decade the concept of ‘resilience' – broadly viewed as the capacity to plan, prepare, respond and recover from shocks or disturbances - has gained increasing attention within urban planning literature. Yet there remains ongoing debate around how this concept can be operationalised within planning policy and practice. This paper presents emerging findings from two EU funded projects – HARMONISE and RESILENS – which both seek to explore the development of e-tools and processes to equip planners with capabilities to assess and enhance the resilience of existing and future urban development projects. To date, the widespread development and optimisation of such tools (and subsequent exploitation of such functions) have been relatively limited in practice due to a poor understanding of resilience as a concept, and differing conceptualisations of ‘resilience' across cities and national borders. This paper examines some of the key practical challenges in this respect.