Prioritizing resilience criteria and indicators in urban disadvantaged areas using the Best-Worst Method (BWM)

Urban disadvantaged areas are highly vulnerable to natural hazards due to physical, social, economic, and institutional deficiencies. These areas-such as historic residential area, decayed residential areas, informal settlements, and social housing-experience distinct challenges that necessitate tailored resilience strategies. Considering Iran's high hazard proneness, strengthening resilience in such areas is an urgent priority. Existing resilience literature often adopts a generalized, city-wide perspective, lacking the granularity for effective local-level resource allocation in diverse disadvantaged areas. This study aims to identify and prioritize resilience criteria and indicators across the four types of disadvantaged areas. A comprehensive literature review extracted potential resilience criteria, refined and validated using the Delphi method with 16 experts engaged via snowball sampling. The Best-Worst Method (BWM), an MCDM approach, weighted and ranked criteria for each area type. Results show economic capacity is most critical in informal settlements. Physical-environmental aspects (building quality, infrastructure) dominate historical and decayed areas. Institutional dimensions (governance, accountability, policy support) are most influential in social housing resilience. Cross-area comparison reveals shared and context-specific determinants, underscoring the need for integrated, area-sensitive resilience planning. Findings offer a framework for urban planners to prioritize targeted interventions, balancing physical upgrades with social empowerment, economic capacity building, and institutional strengthening for sustainable and inclusive resilience.