Urban and Regional Resilience Assessment in the SDG Era: Metrics, Integration, and Translational Governance

Urban and regional resilience research examines how cities, regions, and interconnected social–ecological systems anticipate, absorb, recover from, and transform in response to acute shocks and chronic stresses. At the midpoint of the 2030 Agenda, extreme weather, pandemics, resource depletion, land degradation, urban heat, and uneven development increasingly interact across spatial and institutional scales. Although SDG 11 explicitly calls for resilient cities and human settlements, resilience is also closely connected to SDGs 8, 9, 13, and 15. Recent studies have advanced composite indicators, spatial analysis, climate-risk modelling, nature-based solutions, and data-driven monitoring. However, a persistent gap remains between what assessments measure and what governance acts upon: indices are often disconnected from statutory planning, risk maps rarely shape budgets, and SDG alignment is frequently treated as symbolic rather than accountable. Translational governance offers a way to address this gap by examining how knowledge, metrics, and uncertainty are converted into legitimate, funded, and monitorable decisions.

This Research Topic aims to advance rigorous and actionable approaches for assessing urban and regional resilience in relation to SDG implementation, while strengthening evidence on how assessments are translated into policy and practice. It welcomes research that develops, tests, and validates multidimensional and multiscale assessment frameworks; examines resilience under compound hazards and alternative climate and development pathways; and investigates how indicators are embedded in planning, regulation, investment appraisal, and budget cycles. Contributions should consider who commissions assessments, who is accountable for acting on them, and how equity, local knowledge, uncertainty, and competing priorities shape decision-making. The Research Topic also seeks to identify how assessment findings can support climate adaptation, just transitions, nature-based solutions, infrastructure investment, and inclusive governance, particularly in resource-dependent cities, river basins, urban agglomerations, and regions in the Global South.

The Scope covers urban, regional, and social–ecological systems and focuses on the relationship between resilience assessment, SDG localization, and implementation; it does not limit contributions to a particular method, geographic region, hazard, or governance scale. To gather further insights into SDG-aligned resilience assessment and its translation into governance, we welcome articles addressing, but not limited to, the following themes:

• Development and validation of resilience metrics, composite indices, and indicator systems aligned with SDG targets, including SDG 9.1, 11.5, and 13.1.
• Critical evaluation of assessment frameworks and their treatment of SDG synergies, trade-offs, equity, uncertainty, and transformative change.
• Mapping and comparison of resilience at neighbourhood, city, river-basin, and regional scales, including evidence of uptake by planning authorities.
• Assessment and scenario modelling of compound risks, cascading impacts, and alternative climate and development pathways.
• Social resilience, governance, community adaptive capacity, equity, and just transitions in post-industrial and resource-dependent cities.
• Social–ecological resilience, land-degradation reversal, ecosystem security, and connections among SDGs 1, 11, 13, and 15.
• Effectiveness and cost–benefit analysis of nature-based solutions, green infrastructure, urban forests, and hybrid infrastructure.
• Institutional and political conditions for translation, including mandates, accountability, financing, budget cycles, regulatory uptake, and implementation barriers.
• Decision-support tools, dashboards, scenario planners, and participatory processes that convert assessments into implementable policies.
• Mixed-methods and interdisciplinary approaches integrating spatial analysis, complexity science, behavioral economics, and stakeholder engagement.

The Research Topic is open methodologically. Papers employing artificial intelligence, cellular automata, the Internet of Things, digital twins, GIS and remote sensing, spatial statistics, Bayesian and simulation methods, or real-time monitoring are of particular interest where the method serves the assessment and governance questions above.

Article types: We welcome original research, methods papers, case studies, and policy briefs.

Article types and fees

This Research Topic accepts the following article types, unless otherwise specified in the Research Topic description:

• Brief Research Report
• Community Case Study
• Conceptual Analysis
• Curriculum, Instruction, and Pedagogy
• Data Report
• Editorial
• FAIR² Data
• General Commentary
• Hypothesis and Theory
• ... View all formats

Articles that are accepted for publication by our external editors following rigorous peer review incur a publishing fee charged to Authors, institutions, or funders.

Article types

This Research Topic accepts the following article types, unless otherwise specified in the Research Topic description:

• Brief Research Report
• Community Case Study
• Conceptual Analysis
• Curriculum, Instruction, and Pedagogy
• Data Report
• Editorial
• FAIR² Data
• General Commentary
• Hypothesis and Theory
• Methods
• Mini Review
• Opinion
• Original Research
• Perspective
• Policy and Practice Reviews
• Policy Brief
• Review
• Systematic Review
• Technology and Code

Keywords: Urban resilience assessment, Translational governance, SDG localization, Compound climate risk, Resilience metrics and indicators, Social–ecological systems

Important note: All contributions to this Research Topic must be within the scope of the section and journal to which they are submitted, as defined in their mission statements. Frontiers reserves the right to guide an out-of-scope manuscript to a more suitable section or journal at any stage of peer review.