An integrated framework for urban resilience to climate change - Case study: Sea level rise impacts on the Nile Delta coastal urban areas

The Nile Delta is one of the most vulnerable areas in the world to sea level rise (SLR). Urban areas, located in the coastal area of the Nile Delta have been experiencing, over the past five decades, mostly unplanned rapid growth. Existing research work on the Nile Delta coastal urban areas focused only on their vulnerability to SLR inundation, with no work on the resilience of these urban areas. This paper, accordingly, intends on one hand to propose an integrated resilience framework for urban areas in general and to develop and apply an urban resilience index, incorporating relevant variables and inundation by SLR hazard aspect on the Nile Delta urban coastal areas. The application of this resilience index reveals that 11 out of the 18 urban areas are projected to be vulnerable to inundation under different SLR scenarios. Additionally, it was found that urban resilience is influenced on one hand the differences in scale of area and population vulnerable to inundation by SLR in each of these areas. Resilience is also influenced by their socioeconomic characteristics, environmental quality and scale of infrastructure and services provision, on the other.