Arup - City Resilience Framework (CRF)

Durban, South Africa · Santiago · Concepción (Chile) · 2014 · Arup Developed with the support of the Rockefeller Foundation

The City Resilience Framework has influenced urban resilience planning worldwide and has become one of the most widely used methodologies for integrated resilience governance. Key impacts include: Tested in over 100 cities globally to guide planning and monitoring efforts. Influence urban practitioners by establishing a common narrative around holistic planning. Improved coordination across municipal departments. Better prioritization of resilience investments. Increased capacity to anticipate and absorb systemic shocks. Stronger integration of climate adaptation, social equity, and infrastructure planning. Development of city-wide resilience strategies across multiple continents. Its influence extends beyond individual projects by shaping how cities approach long-term resilience and climate adaptation planning.

Highlight

A globally adopted framework that helps cities move beyond disaster recovery toward systemic resilience, integrating infrastructure, governance, social cohesion, and environmental performance into a single decision-making framework.

Extended description

The City Resilience Framework (CRF) was developed by Arup with support from the Rockefeller Foundation to help cities build long-term resilience in an increasingly uncertain world.

The framework provides a comprehensive methodology for understanding how cities can withstand, adapt to, and transform in response to shocks such as floods, heatwaves, pandemics, infrastructure failures, or economic crises, as well as chronic stresses including climate change, inequality, housing pressures, and environmental degradation.

Unlike traditional resilience approaches that focus primarily on physical infrastructure, the CRF considers resilience as the result of interactions between infrastructure, governance, leadership, social cohesion, economic systems, and environmental conditions.

The framework was updated in 2024 to meet the current needs of cities, and is structured around:

It enables cities to identify systemic vulnerabilities, prioritize investments, improve cross-departmental coordination, and develop integrated resilience strategies.

Its ultimate objective is not simply to help cities recover from crises, but to enable them to "bounce forward" and emerge stronger, more inclusive, and better prepared for future challenges.

Demonstrated metrics

The framework does not prescribe fixed quantitative metrics.

Instead, it provides a structured methodology for cities to define and monitor their own resilience indicators.

The CRF is organized around:

When applied locally, cities typically develop indicators related to:

The framework transforms the question from: "What is resilience?" to "How can resilience be measured and managed in a specific city context?"

Real impact

The City Resilience Framework has influenced urban resilience planning worldwide and has become one of the most widely used methodologies for integrated resilience governance.

Key impacts include:

Its influence extends beyond individual projects by shaping how cities approach long-term resilience and climate adaptation planning.

Implementation location & date

First developed and deployed between 2014 and 2017, updated in 2024.

Applied globally through the 100 Resilient Cities programme and subsequently by the Resilient Cities Network (R-Cities).

Examples include:

Sources