Assessing Resilience in Stormwater Management

Resilience is a critical property of a liveable city. Urban communities aspire to live safe in the knowledge that life will go on ‘as normal’ in the face of extreme weather events or other natural disturbances. They also value high quality receiving environments that are not at risk of crossing ecological ‘tipping points’ as a result of the effects of the steady creep of urban development. Building resilience into stormwater management means adopting approaches that reduce vulnerability both to sudden natural shocks and to the potentially irreversible long-term environmental effects of urban development. Drawing on relevant literature, this paper describes a range of technical and social criteria for assessing resilience in relation to stormwater management. It also proposes the application of selected criteria as resilience indicators in a decision support system (DSS) for assessing stormwater-related outcomes associated with planning future liveable cities.