Technological Innovations for Enhancing Disaster Resilience in Smart Cities: A Comprehensive Urban Scholar’s Analysis

Abstract

Despite advancements, Smart Cities encounter hazards. Smart Cities’ higher reliance on interconnected systems and networks makes them susceptible to risks beyond conventional ones, leading to cascading effects. Hence, the effective use of technological innovations is vital. This effective use involves understanding the existing use of technology innovations for resilience making in Smart Cities and the wise utilisation of them as suitable for different contexts. However, there is a research gap for a fundamental study that synthesises the emerging and disruptive technologies that are being used to improve the disaster resilience in Smart Cities and how they can be classified. Therefore, this research aimed to address that need, so that a Smart City evaluating the technologies/tools for disaster resilience could wisely utilise the available resources and prioritise the most suitable for their context-specific needs. Following a comprehensive literature review, the study identified 24 technologies and/or tools for creating, sustaining, and enhancing the resilience within Smart Cities. In doing so, they should collect and manage citywide geodata and foster public participation. While the wise utilisation of the most suitable and feasible tools and technologies is a measure of smartness in a Smart City, the findings suggested four key factors with which these technologies could be assessed. These four factors included impact on society, the adoption speed by Smart Cities, the maturity of the technology, and the capabilities offered to the community.