An integrated framework for resilient urban mobility: coupling disruption taxonomy, equilibrium modelling and participatory validation

Abstract Urban transportation systems face cascading disruptions from natural hazards, infrastructure failures, and social events that traditional sectoral analysis fails to capture. This paper introduces a novel integrated framework that quantifies antifragility in urban transport systems through an explicit Antifragility Factor, KPIs that capture distributional impacts across vulnerable population groups, and a closed learning loop that converts validated vulnerability evidence into measurable system improvement, subject to a consolidation audit. The framework links three complementary components: a multi-source disruption taxonomy classifying events across five domains and four spatial scales; a quantitative equilibrium model computing system performance through twelve key indicators, together with a composite Antifragility Factor computed from four recovery-relevant indicators that distinguishes simple recovery from post-disruption improvement; and a five-stage participatory validation methodology integrating stakeholder evidence from two instruments: a pan-European citizen survey ( n = 156 across 15 European countries) and a practitioner KPI-usage survey of the project’s partner institutions. The survey identifies extreme-weather hazards as respondents’ dominant future concern and public transport reliability as their leading improvement priority, while recorded KPI usage across five responding institutions supports the framework’s emphasis on accessibility and travel-time indicators; older and low-income populations are treated as priority vulnerable groups on the basis of the accessibility literature and the framework’s equity design; and a provisional 35–40% citizen-priority band is proposed as a governance-attention trigger for empirical testing. The framework is illustrated through a synthetic Bratislava flood scenario, in which the model produces a 29% loss in system performance (upper Moderate vulnerability) with disproportionate impacts on older travellers, while sensitivity analysis shows that the scenario remains a priority concern under $$\pm$$ 20% parameter variation. These results demonstrate how the framework operates; empirical confirmation of antifragility in real transport systems is the objective of the pilot deployment across four European cities, scheduled through 2027.