Building urban infrastructure resilience through network governance

Abstract

As the scale and intensity of disasters continue to increase, building and enhancing resilience to disasters has become a critical policy and governance issue. This topic is crucial to urban infrastructure resilience because infrastructure systems support the continuity of operations of governments and businesses, and are essential to the economy, health, and public safety. This paper proposes and applies a network governance perspective to examine interdependent infrastructure systems, such as water (wastewater), electric power, transportation, and telecommunication. The paper contributes to a better understanding of the role of interdependent infrastructure systems in enhancing urban infrastructure resilience to disasters. The paper also highlights the need to leverage collaborative leadership and organizational capacity to develop robust and connected community networks to enhance urban infrastructure resilience to disasters.