Resilience of infrastructure for midsized cities against flooding: a case study

Purpose This study aims to develop a resilience index for midsized cities experiencing adverse flooding events. City floodings become more frequent and intensified due to the changing climate causing extreme events, such as storm surges, hurricanes and riverine flooding. The index is easy to use by nonengineers such as managers, agencies and city officials. A case study shows the evaluation process and the use of the city resilience index. Design/methodology/approach This study uses a resilience model from literature to evaluate the individual resilience of affected infrastructure components against flooding. Based on the interconnection of these infrastructure components, this study combines them, as independent or interdependent components, to create a city resilience index ranging between zero and one. Furthermore, the developed city resilience index takes into consideration the socioeconomic characteristics of the population and it can be extended to other midsized cities with similar characteristics globally. Findings The case of the 1994 flood in Middle Georgia and its impact on the Macon metropolitan area benchmarks the city resilience index. Damage and recovery data of the infrastructure, roads, pipelines, dams, culverts, buildings and levees were collected using literature review and studying engineering reports that were created during and after the event. In addition, interviews with city engineers, having witnessed and analyzed the damage at that time, helped verify and solidify the collected data. A resilience index was evaluated for the city and the given flooding event. The index can suggest the reinforcement of existing infrastructure and can be used to determine the impact of these improvements on future flooding events. Originality/value Although literature provides a series of metrics for resilience, the proposed metric is easy to develop and calculate by nonengineers such as managers, agencies and city officials. It can extend to different midsized cities globally and other than flooding adverse events. The case study data can be used by other researchers to check and compare literature metrics.