Indicators of urban climate resilience (case study: Varamin, Iran)

Natural and man-made disasters caused by global climate change affect inhabitant health and well-being in the urban environments. One of the main issues in environmental planning in any form of residential area is monitoring the resilience of such disasters. This challenge has become more complicated when considering socio-ecological aspects of human-environmental systems and different types of land use and land cover in the resilience assessment process. In the present study, the resilience of Varamin, Iran, concerning climate change has been investigated through Analytic Network Process (ANP). The prominent components and indicators of climate resilience in the city were extracted using various datasets, field surveys, interviewing 44 urban planning experts through a questionnaire, and the Delphi method. Four components and 33 indicators were obtained based on the climatic resilience factor and integrated using the ANP model. A total of 393 citizens of Varamin city were invited to complete a questionnaire. The questionnaire was designed based on four environmental, socio-economical, infrastructural, and institutional components. According to the survey, the highest priority in climate resilience was for people who live in primary settlements. The city officials must pay special attention to these areas to make the city resilient and consider it a priority in their planning. Also, the climate change risks factor in resilience from the citizens' point of view was 2.15, which is less than the desired average and indicates habitat vulnerability against climate change. In addition, socio-economical and infrastructural components had higher resilience than environmental and institutional components. According to the suggestions of the citizens, the cooperation of government, local institutions, and educational organizations is effective in reducing and adapting to the effects of climate change and improving urban resilience.