Smart Blue-Green Infrastructure for Urban Climate Resilience: A Conceptual Synthesis Framework

Smart Blue-Green Infrastructure for Urban Climate Resilience: A Conceptual Synthesis Framework Sara Rahmani1 1- Master of Landscape Architecture, Shiraz University, Iran - [email protected] Abstract Climate-related extremes are becoming increasingly severe in urban areas, and blue-green infrastructure (BGI) has been widely recognized as a practical approach for strengthening urban climate resilience. The integration of smart technologies with BGI systems may further improve climate-responsive urban management through more informed, adaptive, and context-sensitive approaches. This study explores the relationship between smartness orientations and climate-resilience functions in urban environments, with a particular focus on resilience to heat, floods, and droughts. Through a synthesis review of literature on Smart BGI, smartness orientations, and climate-resilience functions, an analytical mapping framework was developed. The analytical mapping indicates that monitoring has the strongest association with all reviewed resilience functions and remains the most extensively studied orientation. Predictive approaches are more commonly linked to flood resilience, responsive-control approaches to thermal and flood resilience, and adaptive management to drought resilience. Decision-support approaches demonstrate a moderate relevance across all resilience functions. The study further highlights the importance of considering contextual conditions and operational limitations in the design and implementation of Smart BGI. Enhancing the resilience contribution of smart BGI should therefore extend beyond technological integration and monitoring alone toward better alignment with the ecological and hydrological functions of BGI systems, as well as more adaptive and multifunctional resilience strategies across diverse urban contexts. Keywords : Blue-green infrastructure, Smart technologies, Climate resilience, Nature-based solutions