Recognizing resilience evolution and connectivity in the Yangtze River Delta urban agglomeration

Urban infrastructure resilience is critical for sustainable development in rapidly urbanising regions. However, existing assessments often fail to capture the complex interdependencies between cities, which limits our understanding of topological evolution of resilience networks at the regional scale. This study presents a novel framework that integrates the pressure-state-response model with complex network theory to evaluate the evolution of infrastructure resilience across 41 cities in China's Yangtze River Delta (YRD) from 2013 to 2022. With the help of ArcGIS and network analysis, considerable spatiotemporal dynamics was uncovered. Key results show that rapid resilience improvements in core cities have exacerbated regional inequalities. The performance in pressure, state and response subsystems exhibited distinct regional patterns. Network analysis indicated an increased cooperation in state and response systems, and the distribution of pressure sources was relatively dispersed. Furthermore, key node cities were most dynamic within the pressure network and remained relatively stable in the state and response networks. These insights offer a valuable decision-support tool for achieving balanced and resilient urban construction in the YRD and similar metropolitan regions.