Integrated Risk–Safety–Sustainability framework (IRSS framework) for resilient Urban infrastructure and improved City life

Abstract Rapid urbanisation, infrastructure interdependencies, climate-related pressures, resource constraints, and growing societal expectations require integrated approaches to urban resilience and sustainability. However, safety, health, water, environmental, energy, transportation, and resource circularity are often managed through fragmented institutional and operational structures, limiting the capacity to recognise cross-domain risks and cascading effects. This Perspective proposes an Integrated Risk–Safety–Sustainability (IRSS) Framework for Resilient Urban Infrastructure and Improved City Life. The framework conceptualises urban infrastructure as an interconnected socio-technical system and uses multidimensional risk as a common basis for integrating the seven urban domains. A distinctive feature is the conceptual extension of near-miss intelligence beyond conventional occupational safety to support identification of precursor conditions, latent vulnerabilities, cross-domain dependencies, and emerging system imbalances. The framework integrates systems thinking, urban resilience, risk governance, sustainability transitions, and integrated management principles within a four-layer architecture linking urban systems, risk and near-miss intelligence, risk assessment and interpretation, and risk-informed decision-making with adaptive governance and continuous learning. The framework provides a conceptual foundation for exploring coordinated urban risk management and for future empirical validation, indicator development, pilot implementation, and policy application. Its potential contribution to urban resilience, sustainability, infrastructure performance, and quality of city life remains to be evaluated through empirical research.