Strathclyde Business School Newsletter
February 2015

Academics part of collaborative team awarded 4.6million Euros to investigate resilient cities

Two Strathclyde Business School academics are part of a consortium which has been awarded 4.6 million Euros to investigate Smart Mature Resilient Cities.

Professors Susan Howick (Department of Management Science) and Colin Eden (Department of Strategy & Organisation) are part of a consortium awarded the funds from Horizon 2020. The three year project will work with a number of cities across Europe to help increase their resilience to crises and disasters, which could involve man-made threats such as accidents and terrorism, as well as natural hazards such as floods and earthquakes. The project will develop and validate Resilience Guidelines that will enable society to resist, absorb, accommodate and recover from the effects of a hazard in a timely and efficient manner.

Strathclyde Business School will be collaborating on the project with a number of other universities - University of Agder, University of Navarra and Linkoping University; the cities of Glasgow, Bristol, Kristiansand, San Sebastian, Vejle, Rome, and Riga, as well as organisations such as DIN, the German Institute for Standardization and ICLEI.

A number of tools will be developed as a part of the project. These include 1) a Resilience Maturity Model defining the trajectory of a city through measurable resilience levels; 2) a Systemic Risk Assessment Questionnaire that, beyond assessing a city's risk, determines its resilience maturity level; 3) a portfolio of Resilience Building Policies that enable a city to progress towards higher maturity levels; 4) a System Dynamics Model allowing the diagnosis, monitoring and exploration of a city's resilience trajectory as determined by resilience building policies, and, 5) a Resilience Engagement and Communication Tool to integrate the wider public in community resilience, including public-private cooperation.

Professor Howick said, "We are delighted to be part of this project and look forward to working with our partners in the consortium on a project which will have benefits across Europe."