Peer reviews for making cities resilient

Abstract

Peer reviews are a unique governance tool that use expertise from one city or country to assess and strengthen the capabilities of another. Peer review tools are gaining momentum in disaster management and remain an important but understudied topic in risk governance. Methodologies to conduct a peer review are still in their infancy. To enhance these, a systematic literature review (SLR) of academic and non-academic literature was conducted on city resilience peer reviews. Thirty-three attributes of resilience are identified, which provides useful insights into how research and practice can inform risk governance, and utilise peer reviews, to drive meaningful change. Moreover, it situates the challenges associated with resilience building tools within risk governance to support the development of interdisciplinary perspectives for integrated city resilience frameworks. Results of this research have been used to develop a peer review methodology and an international standard on conducting peer reviews for disaster risk reduction.