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Resilience of Urban Social-Ecological-Technological Systems (SETS): A Review

September 2023
Sustainable Cities and Society

September 2023

DOI:10.1016/j.scs.2023.104910

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Authors:

Ayyoob Sharifi

Hiroshima University

Resilience is a widely debated concept that encompasses various interpretations and definitions. Recently, in science and policy circles, there has been a growing interest in the concept of Social-Ecological-Technological Systems (SETS) resilience which offers a new interpretation. While this concept is now used frequently, it is not properly understood and there is still a lack of clarity on what it means and its underpinning principles. This lack of clarity and understanding may confuse and even disorient researchers and policy makers. To address this issue, we review the literature published in the context of urban systems. The reviewed literature is mainly focused on nature-based solutions, indicating more contributions from the ecological field. Also, flooding, extreme heat, and drought are major stressors discussed in the literature. We elaborate on the definition of SETS resilience and discuss that its dominant principles are adaptability, transformability, flexibility, redundancy, equity, diversity, foresight capacity, connectivity, robustness, multi-functionality, learning, and non-linearity. We also expound upon the key components of SETS, how they are intertwined, and potential trade-offs that may emerge between them. Our study demonstrates that the implementation of the SETS approach leads to numerous ancillary benefits. These include benefits for climate change adaptation and mitigation, pandemic prevention and response, human health and well-being, and justice. If multi-level and polycentric governance strategies are adopted, it can also help avoid trade-offs that may emerge between social, ecological, and technological dimensions. We conclude by emphasizing that the literature is dominated by epistemological approaches and more empirical research is needed to understand better the complex dynamics of SETS resilience.

The PRISMA framework for literature search and selection. Adapted from Page et al. (2021).

…

Major resilience principles mentioned in the reviewed literature. The size of each term is proportional to the number of times it has appeared in the reviewed papers. The colors are only for presentation purpose.

…

The four key stages of resilience planning and the main principles related to each stage. Note that, in addition to the overarching ones listed on the left panel, some principles may be related to more than one stage. We have allocated them to one stage based on their main contribution.

…

An example showing how the SETS approach can provide opportunities for addressing urban heat challenges in cities.

…

Figures - uploaded by Ayyoob Sharifi

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Content uploaded by Ayyoob Sharifi

Content may be subject to copyright.

Sustainable Cities and Society 99 (2023) 104910

Available online 3 September 2023

Resilience of urban social-ecological-technological systems (SETS):

A review

Ayyoob Shari

Hiroshima University, The IDEC Institute & Network for Education and Research on Peace and Sustainability (NERPS), 1-5-1 Kagamiyama, Higashi Hiroshima City,

Hiroshima, 739-8529, Japan

School of Architecture and Design, Lebanese American University, Beirut, Lebanon

ARTICLE INFO

Keywords:

Social-ecological-technological systems

Urban resilience

Trade-offs

Adaptability

Justice

Resilient cities

ABSTRACT

Resilience is a widely debated concept that encompasses various interpretations and denitions. Recently, in

science and policy circles, there has been a growing interest in the concept of Social-Ecological-Technological

Systems (SETS) resilience which offers a new interpretation. While this concept is now used frequently, it is

not properly understood and there is still a lack of clarity on what it means and its underpinning principles. This

lack of clarity and understanding may confuse and even disorient researchers and policy makers. To address this

issue, we review the literature published in the context of urban systems. The reviewed literature is mainly

focused on nature-based solutions, indicating more contributions from the ecological eld. Also, ooding,

extreme heat, and drought are major stressors discussed in the literature. We elaborate on the denition of SETS

resilience and discuss that its dominant principles are adaptability, transformability, exibility, redundancy,

equity, diversity, foresight capacity, connectivity, robustness, multi-functionality, learning, and non-linearity.

We also expound upon the key components of SETS, how they are intertwined, and potential trade-offs that

may emerge between them. Our study demonstrates that the implementation of the SETS approach leads to

numerous ancillary benets. These include benets for climate change adaptation and mitigation, pandemic

prevention and response, human health and well-being, and justice. If multi-level and polycentric governance

strategies are adopted, it can also help avoid trade-offs that may emerge between social, ecological, and tech-

nological dimensions. We conclude by emphasizing that the literature is dominated by epistemological ap-

proaches and more empirical research is needed to understand better the complex dynamics of SETS resilience.

1. Introduction

Resilience has been a buzzword in research and policy circles for

over two decades. This is unsurprising given the increasing trends of

adverse events and the projected increase in their frequency and in-

tensity due to climate change. The eld of resilience is constantly

evolving, and various concepts such as ‘engineering resilience’,

‘ecological resilience’, ‘social resilience’, and ‘community resilience’

have been introduced over time (Cinner & Barnes, 2019; Donagh Hor-

gan & Dimitrijevi´

c, 2018; Kang, Bowman, Hannibal, Woodruff & Port-

ney, 2023; Pickett, McGrath, Cadenasso & Felson, 2014). Further, there

has been a growing recognition of the need for integrated approaches

across multiple social, ecological, economic, and technological domains

of resilience (Ahlborg, Ruiz-Mercado, Molander & Masera, 2019;

Cabezas, Pawlowski, Mayer & Hoagland, 2004; Chang et al., 2021;

Holling, 2001; Wang, Wang, Chen & Liu, 2022). In particular,

considering the complex interlinkages between humans and natural

ecosystems, much work has been done on social-ecological resilience

(Anderies, Janssen & Ostrom, 2004; Holling, 2001; Ostrom, 2009;

Ramaswami et al., 2012; Turner et al., 2022; Xiang, 2019). This entails a

systemic approach acknowledging that social and ecological systems

co-evolve, and socio-ecological resilience is more than the sum of social

and ecological resilience (Cucuzza, Stoll & Leslie, 2020; de Vos, Biggs &

Preiser, 2019). Such systemic approaches can be further expanded to

integrate other domains and dimensions of resilience. For instance, Li,

Dong and Liu (2020) mentioned the need to include the economic

dimension and emphasized that coupled interactions across various

social, economic, and ecological systems should be considered. The

importance of integrating the economic dimension has also been

emphasized in other studies (Hirt & Campbell, 2023; Wang et al., 2022).

Similarly, it is argued that social-ecological resilience cannot be disen-

tangled from the ever-evolving technological world (McPhearson et al.,

E-mail address: shari@hiroshima-u.ac.jp.

Contents lists available at ScienceDirect

Sustainable Cities and Society

journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/scs

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.scs.2023.104910

Received 20 May 2023; Received in revised form 30 July 2023; Accepted 30 August 2023

Sustainable Cities and Society 99 (2023) 104910

2022). On the one hand, technological advances could pose risks to

human and ecological systems and exacerbate vulnerabilities. On the

other hand, wellmanaged disruptive technologies could offer solutions

to enhance resilience to multiple socioeconomic and ecological hazards

and stressors and help avoid crossing tipping points. Accordingly, the

resilience of Social-Ecological-Technological Systems (SETS) has gained

traction. While this concept is now used frequently, it is not properly

understood, and there is still a lack of clarity on what it means and its

underpinning principles. This lack of clarity and understanding may

confuse and even disorient researchers and policy makers.

Against this background, this study aims to synthesize information

reported in the literature to better understand the theoretical basis and

underpinning principles of SETS resilience. While we acknowledge that

there is a long history of research on various aspects of resilience (e.g.,

socio-ecological and ecological-social-economical), we focus on SETS

because it is a relatively new strand of resilience that has been relatively

less studied. By focusing on SETS, we do not intend to overemphasize the

role of technology in enhancing urban resilience. In fact, we acknowl-

edge that technologically deterministic approaches may cause

inequality issues, lead to a false sense of security, and increase vulner-

abilities in the long run (Eubanks, 2017; Kaika, 2017). Therefore, ho-

listic approaches that consider the needs of different stakeholders,

recognize interlinkages between multiple dimensions (i.e., social, eco-

nomic, ecological, and technological), and facilitate social learning and

transformation are essential (Cretney & Bond, 2014; Pickett, Cadenasso

& Grove, 2004). As will be discussed later, these are key components of

SETS resilience.

The following questions guide this scoping review: What are the

general characteristics of research on SETS? How is socio-ecological-

technological resilience dened in literature? What are the underlying

characteristics (principles) of social-ecological-technological resilience?

What are the key components of SETS, and how are they intertwined?

and What potential trade-offs may emerge between different compo-

nents of SETS and how can be dealt with?

The remainder of this paper is structured as follows. Review mate-

rials and methods are explained in Section 2. The review ndings are

synthesized and reported in Section 3. Finally, Section 4 concludes the

study by highlighting the main ndings and recommending priority

research areas.

2. Materials and methods

We adopted a systematic approach for literature search and selec-

tion. This was guided by the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic

Reviews and Meta-Analyses (PRISMA) framework (Page et al., 2021),

commonly employed for systematic literature reviews, bibliometric re-

views, and scoping reviews. Academic research indexing databases,

namely Web of Science (WoS) and Scopus, were utilized for the litera-

ture search on December 31st, 2022. This yielded 483 documents. After

excluding documents not written in English and duplicates, 319 docu-

ments remained in the database. The titles and abstracts of these studies

were reviewed to determine if they met the objectives of the review. At

this stage, 283 documents that did not address interactions across social,

ecological, and technological components were excluded. The remain-

ing 28 documents were examined in detail to extract the necessary data

for analysis. In addition, four documents cited in the reference sections

of the reviewed papers were found relevant and added to the database.

In the end, 32 documents were reviewed for the purpose of this study.

This process is shown in Fig. 1.

A thorough content analysis was performed on the chosen papers to

obtain essential data for analysis. A Microsoft Excel spreadsheet was

created to gather data on the studies’ geographic, methodological, and

sectoral focuses. In addition, separate columns were allocated to collect

data on the denition and underlying principles of SETS and co-benets

and trade-offs between SETS components. An inductive approach guided

the content analysis. In this approach, the extracted data is coded iter-

atively. In other words, initial codes are developed based on the contents

of the rst reviewed paper. New codes are added to the data extraction

Fig. 1. The PRISMA framework for literature search and selection. Adapted from Page et al. (2021).

A. Shari

Sustainable Cities and Society 99 (2023) 104910

sheet if applicable after reading the next paper. This process will

continue until all papers in the database are reviewed. Next, the

collected data were synthesized to answer the review questions

mentioned earlier.

3. Results

3.1. Overview of the reviewed papers

The rst paper on this topic was published in 2010, indicating that

the resilience of urban SETS is still a new concept. Few papers were

published prior to 2018. However, in recent years, the number of pub-

lished papers has increased; the highest recorded count was 8 in 2022.

Most of the reviewed papers are ‘research papers’ (~59%). The rest are

‘review papers’ (~19%), and other types of papers, including ‘synthesis’,

‘editorial’, ‘forum’, ‘insight’, ‘letter’, and ‘concept paper’ (~ 22%).

Regarding the sources, there are 21 unique journals covering various

city-related issues. This indicates the inter-disciplinary nature of SETS.

In terms of the number of publications, noteworthy journals are ‘Current

Opinion in Environmental Sustainability’, ‘Ecology and Society’,

‘Earth’s Future’, and ‘Sustainability’. Geographically, the majority of

studies have a generic scope. The United States is the primary focus of 11

papers. No other country has been studied in more than one paper. Half

of the papers are purely theoretical, but the rest have some level of

empirical focus. In terms of methodological approaches, 24 papers are

qualitative, four are quantitative, and the rest have adopted mixed ap-

proaches. The most common method is qualitative/descriptive case

study (7 papers), followed by discourse-based analysis (4 papers), geo-

spatial analysis (2 papers), questionnaire survey (2 papers), modeling (2

papers), and composite index and capital portfolio approach (each one

paper). The case studies are mainly from the United States (including

cases from Arizona, Texas, Oregon, Maryland, New York, Georgia, and

Florida). There are also a few cases from other countries, including

Australia, Italy, India, Nepal, and South Korea. It is clear that more case

studies from countries other than the US are needed. Further, there is a

need for more quantitative case studies that explore future scenarios.

Information related to these cases has been provided across different

parts of the Results section (Section 3). Regarding sectoral focus, apart

from generic studies, most papers are focused on Nature-based Solutions

(NbS) (n =11). Other noteworthy sectors are infrastructure (n =7),

water (n =4), and energy (n =2). Finally, ooding (n =9), extreme heat

(n =5), and drought (n =3) are key stressors studied in the reviewed

papers.

3.2. Denitions of SETS and their resilience

Despite the absence of explicit denitions for SETS and their resil-

ience in the reviewed papers, it is possible to extract denitions from the

descriptions provided in the literature. There is a consensus that SETS

and their resilience have gained traction following three main de-

velopments: the increasing understanding of the unsustainability of

human-environment interactions, the growing concerns over the

adverse events that are likely to grow in frequency and intensity due to

climate change, and the broad recognition of the importance of systemic

approaches for making human-environment interactions more sustain-

able and address the adverse events that are facing cities (Chang et al.,

2021; Kim et al., 2022; McPhearson et al., 2022).

Socio-Ecological Systems (SES) resilience is a more established

concept that aims to offer frameworks for optimizing human-

environment interactions and providing solutions to address the risks

of natural and climate-induced hazards through different adaptation and

mitigation measures (Anderies et al., 2004; Kim et al., 2022). In other

words, achieving socio-ecological resilience necessitates acknowledging

the intricate and dynamic interactions between social and ecological

systems, while making fundamental transformations in

human-environmental interactions to sustain system functionality amid

stressors. This is done to steer clear of surpassing crucial thresholds and

tipping points that lead to unsustainable regimes, ultimately endan-

gering both human welfare and ecosystem vitality (Olsson, Galaz &

Boonstra, 2014; Smith & Stirling, 2010). The SETS framework builds on

SES perspectives by emphasizing the important roles that technological

infrastructures play in shaping and managing human-environment in-

teractions. For instance, through its nuanced analysis of the intricate

interplay between environment, infrastructure, and equity consider-

ations, SETS enables us to comprehend how hazards impact society and

their distribution across various segments (Chang et al., 2021).

Based on the SETS perspective, a city’s resilience is determined by

complex and dynamic interactions between interdependent sub-systems

such as the economy, humans, social networks, ecological networks,

biophysical features, regulatory systems, cultural norms, governance

and institutions, physical infrastructure, and built environment. These

interactions occur across multiple spatial and temporal scales (Bixler

et al., 2019; Kotzee & Reyers, 2016; McPhearson et al., 2022). In other

words, system-based and transdisciplinary approaches that account for

such multiscale interactions are essential for cities to effectively and

efciently mitigate, cope with, respond to, recover from, and more

successfully adapt to shocks (i.e., sudden or instantaneous) or stressor-

s/pressures (i.e., long term and incremental) (Ariyaningsih & Shaw,

2022; Bixler et al., 2019; Kotzee & Reyers, 2016; McPhearson et al.,

2022). The SETS perspective, therefore, emphasizes that only enhancing

the capacity of individual urban sub-systems is not sufcient for building

resilience, and the complex and dynamic interactions among them

should also be taken into account (Bixler et al., 2019).

3.3. The underlying principles of urban SETS resilience

Various principles have been used to understand better what con-

tributes to the resilience of SETS. As shown in Fig. 2, these principles are

diverse and cover issues related to different social, ecological, and

technological aspects of resilience. According to Fig. 2, the dominant

principles associated with SETS resilience are adaptability, trans-

formability, exibility, redundancy, equity, diversity, foresight capacity,

connectivity, robustness, multi-functionality, learning, non-linearity,

resistance, and interdependency. Fig. 3 shows that these are mainly

related to the adaptation, absorption, and mitigation stages and abilities

of the resilience-building process (Cutter et al., 2013). These will be

further discussed in the remainder of this section. An important issue

that needs to be mentioned is that there could be different types of

interlinkages between these principles (e.g., co-benets and trade-offs).

Such interlinkages are not adequately addressed in the SETS literature.

However, there have been efforts in other strands of resilience to shed

light on them (Parizi, Taleai & Shari, 2021). Such modeling studies

should also be conducted in the context of SETS.

There is a consensus in the urban resilience literature that resilient

urban systems should be able to plan and prepare for, absorb, recover

from, and adapt to adverse events (Cutter et al., 2013). The SETS

resilience principles mentioned in the literature either cut across all

these abilities or can be mainly associated with a single ability (i.e.,

either planning, absorption, recovery, or adaptation). Most principles

can be categorized as overarching, given their linkages to multiple

abilities. These are often linked to different processes that various

stakeholders undertake to enhance resilience abilities. These processes

are characterized by complex, non-linear, and non-stationary dynamics

across spatial and temporal scales. Integrating technological measures

offers opportunities to capture and optimize such dynamics. Further,

addressing the complex interactions between various social, ecological,

and technological systems of urban systems requires adopting adaptive

systems thinking approaches that consider interactions across multiple

temporal and spatial scales to avoid mismatches/conicts and enhance

synergies (McPhearson et al., 2022). Considering such complex in-

teractions could be challenging. However, technological advances,

particularly in the realm of big data analytics and scenario-making,

A. Shari

Sustainable Cities and Society 99 (2023) 104910

could offer solutions to overcome such challenges.

It should be noted that, the amount of attention that should be paid

to various social, ecological, and technological aspects may vary over

time (McPhearson et al., 2022). For instance, during the early stages of

project deployment, attention to technological aspects may be more

important. However, over time social aspects related to governance and

accessibility become paramount (McPhearson et al., 2022). Further, to

address complexity, SETS should be able to manage non-linear slow

variables and feedback (Kotzee & Reyers, 2016).

Interconnectedness, connectivity, and interdependence are closely

related principles that indicate the strong interdependencies between

social, ecological, and technological systems. Interdependencies can be

of different types and natures. For instance, they could be physical or

institutional. However, regardless of their type, interdependencies could

be hierarchical, lateral, or longitudinal (Gim & Miller, 2022). ‘Hierar-

chical’ refers to the interdependencies between specic systems across

geographical scales (e.g., between a specic urban infrastructure system

with corresponding regional or national systems); ‘lateral’ denotes the

interdependencies between two or more different infrastructure sys-

tems; and ‘longitudinal’ indicates the path dependencies arising from

the extended operation of various urban systems over time (Gim &

Miller, 2022). These have been articulated in a study by Gim and Miller

(2022). Physical interdependencies are well-studied in urban resilience

literature. For instance, in many contexts, hierarchical and lateral in-

terdependencies can be observed between energy infrastructure and

water infrastructure due to the strong energy-water nexus (Shari &

Yamagata, 2016). The nexus could be expanded to include other sectors,

such as food. Obviously, a lack of attention to interdependencies across

these may result in chained effects that could ground the whole system

to a halt (Gim & Miller, 2022). Institutional mechanisms govern such

physical infrastructures to improve their connection and functionality

(e.g., through regular maintenance and upgrading). Therefore,

Fig. 2. Major resilience principles mentioned in the reviewed literature. The size of each term is proportional to the number of times it has appeared in the reviewed

papers. The colors are only for presentation purpose.

Fig. 3. The four key stages of resilience planning and the main principles related to each stage. Note that, in addition to the overarching ones listed on the left panel,

some principles may be related to more than one stage. We have allocated them to one stage based on their main contribution.

A. Shari

Sustainable Cities and Society 99 (2023) 104910

institutional dependencies are also essential to SETS resilience (Gim &

Miller, 2022). Technological approaches can also be used to enhance the

governance mechanisms and optimize interlinkages across multiple

components.

Participatory and collaborative approaches are necessary to address

the interdependencies between different systems properly. Such ap-

proaches facilitate smooth interactions and help break self-reinforcing

feedback loops that are a barrier to transformation and reinforce lock-

in into existing undesirable patterns (Olsson et al., 2014). The likeli-

hood of lock-in increases when institutions do not facilitate participation

in the design, development, and evaluation of infrastructure. This, in

turn, may restrict innovative ideas and perspectives that could be

incorporated to develop transformative resilience approaches (Gim &

Miller, 2022). To avoid that, among other things, there is a need for

participatory governance mechanisms that acknowledge the existence of

multiple interdependencies across different sectors and stakeholders and

establishes innovative and transformative mechanisms to optimize them

during different resilience-building stages, ranging from planning to

absorption, recovery, and adaptation (Gim & Miller, 2022; Donagh

Horgan & Dimitrijevi´

c, 2021). Participatory approaches can also help

promote equity and justice that should be prioritized during different

stages of resilience building. This is because socially vulnerable groups

and communities often lack access to infrastructures, resources, and

services necessary to adequately deal with adverse events (McPhearson

et al., 2022). Further, they are more exposed to risks. Indeed, often,

there is spatial overlap between social, ecological, and technological

vulnerabilities. For instance, socially vulnerable groups are more likely

to be located in ecologically vulnerable areas exposed to technological

hazards (H. J. Chang et al., 2021). Efforts aimed at enhancing resilience

should reduce such vulnerabilities and minimize exposure to hazards. In

this regard, the SETS approach allows integrated measures that enhance

synergies and reduce trade-offs. For instance, without paying attention

to social issues, plans aimed at ecological improvement may result in

gentrication and/or displacement of some groups. Similarly, inequi-

table access to technologies may exacerbate societal inequalities,

thereby undermining resilience. An integrated approach can help avoid

such problems by, among other things, providing affordable housing

options (Chang et al., 2021). While smart technologies such as

web-based platforms and smartphone apps offer unique solutions for

participatory and collaborative governance (Kitchin, 2015), they cannot

always replace face-to-face engagement with stakeholders (D. Horgan &

Dimitrijevic, 2019). Therefore, while smart technologies can support

participatory approaches in the context of SETS, the role of traditional

approaches for co-design and co-implementation of initiatives should

not be overlooked.Robustness, resistance, reliability, and foresight ca-

pacity are principles mainly related to planning and preparation for

adverse events. These can help mitigate the potential impacts of di-

sasters. Robustness and resistance are closely linked; greater levels of

robustness and resistance can increase system reliability, the capacity to

buffer shocks, and the ability to maintain system functionality even

under stress (Krueger, McPhearson & Levin, 2022). However, over-

reliance on these physical characteristics can lead to physical/techno-

logical determinism that creates a false sense of safety/resilience and

may result in catastrophic consequences if tipping points and critical

thresholds are crossed (Shari & Yamagata, 2016). Investing in other

capacities, including absorption and adaptation, is necessary to prevent

that from happening. Further, an enhanced foresight capacity to deal

with uncertainties and emerging characteristics is needed (Munoz-Er-

ickson et al., 2021). Among other things, this demands visioning,

long-term planning, and integration of scenario-making in efforts aimed

at building urban resilience. In this regard, technological advances

enabled by big data analytics and information and communication

technologies can offer useful solutions.

The principles linked to absorption capacity are multi-functionality,

redundancy, diversity, polycentricity, coping capacity, and exibility.

Investment in the absorption capacity is important as, no matter how

robust a system is, it is always likely to be vulnerable to hazards. Ab-

sorption capacity helps minimize damages and loss of system function-

ality, thereby enabling rapid recovery (Shari & Yamagata, 2016).

Having higher tolerance and margin capacity contributes to better ab-

sorption of shocks. This can be achieved by incorporating diverse

components with redundant capacity in the system to meet needs and

demands under different future scenarios (e.g., diverse and redundant

options for stormwater management system or diverse tree species). In

addition, it will contribute to urban resilience by promoting exibility

and multi-functionality of urban infrastructure (e.g., green infrastruc-

ture that can enhance resilience to multiple adverse events such as

extreme heat or urban ooding), investing in decentralized and poly-

centric infrastructure systems that can disperse risk and help prevent

complete system failure, and adopting modular and polycentric gover-

nance mechanisms that allow nimbler reactions when needed. Techno-

logical advances have provided opportunities to promote such

decentralized and polycentric systems. For instance, smart technologies

are increasingly used to decentralize urban energy systems (Bixler et al.,

2020; Smith & Stirling, 2010; Wellmann et al., 2023).

Following a disruptive event that causes disturbance to a socio-

ecological-technological system, the recovery stage entails restoring

the system to its pre-event state or a new state of stability through a

range of short-, medium-, and long-term measures. However, short- and

medium-term measures and actions should be prioritized, as agility is

the essence of any successful recovery (Shari & Yamagata, 2016).

Successful recovery facilitates returning to the pre-event conditions

or a new state of stability. However, adaptation capacity is needed to

enhance the ability of the system to withstand future disturbances and

changing conditions and contribute to the long-term sustainability and

resilience of socio-ecological-technological systems. According to the

reviewed literature, this capacity can be strengthened through various

principles such as learning, adaptability, self-organization, and trans-

formability. Learning is essential as lessons taught by the adverse event

can be used to enhance the overall functionality of urban systems and

ensure better performance against similar events in the future (Shari &

Yamagata, 2016). Adaptability and self-organization are capacities that

enable the system to go through an adverse event with minimum func-

tionality loss. In other words, these capacities allow the system to

continue its operations without the need for a regime shift (Olsson et al.,

2014). This may not, however, be possible when tipping points are

crossed. Under such circumstances, transformative resilience is needed.

Transformability entails the ability to make changes in plans, policies,

and technologies so that regime shifts become possible in response to

emergent needs and issues (Elisabeth H. Krueger et al., 2022; Olsson

et al., 2014).

3.4. SETS components and examples of their interlinkages for SETS

resilience

The three key dimensions of SETS are social, ecological, and tech-

nological (see Fig. 4). For a system to be resilient, interlinkages of the

different components of these dimensions should be maintained. In

other words, any internal or external shocks that disrupt these inter-

linkages will undermine resilience (Grimm, Pickett, Hale & Cadenasso,

2017). This is because disturbances in one component can cause dis-

ruptions in others. For instance, disturbance in the physical infrastruc-

ture could result in the depopulation of a city, thereby affecting the

social structure (Grimm et al., 2017). Also, the Great Fire of Baltimore in

1904 showed that the absence of social infrastructure, such as strict

zoning and warehousing codes and national standards for re hydrant

ttings, can cause physical disruption. The re spread quickly and

caused signicant damage (Grimm et al., 2017). More recently, the

devastating wildre that took place in Fort McMurray during May 2016

resulted in extensive destruction and the displacement of more than 88,

000 individuals. This event serves as a stark reminder of the potential

consequences of the lack of integrated approaches that consider social,

A. Shari

Sustainable Cities and Society 99 (2023) 104910

ecological, and technological dimensions and their interactions (Vail-

lant, 2023). In light of ongoing climate change trends, it is imperative to

adopt such integrated strategies to effectively manage and reduce the

risks associated with natural hazards. The reminder of thsi section out-

lines the interactions between SETS components and their implications

for resilience.

3.4.1. Social-ecological coupling

The coupling between social and ecological dimensions is well

recognized in the literature. Indeed, socio-ecological resilience has

become a key strand of resilience research over the past decade

(Afriyanie et al., 2020; Cretney, 2014; Sterk, van de Leemput & Peeters,

2017). As shown in Fig. 4, multiple social and ecological components

should be linked to each other to enhance the resilience of a system.

For instance, co-managing natural resources and ecosystems is

crucial for adapting to changing conditions and sustainability transi-

tions. This should involve considering the norms, beliefs, and values of

different social groups and stakeholders. Indeed, stakeholder engage-

ment is needed for promoting a sense of ownership and for the co-design,

co-production, and co-implementation of plans and programs for

ecosystem conservation and natural resource management (Nel et al.,

2016). Such approaches contribute to enhancing resilience by, among

other things, addressing inequalities, building local capacity, securing

nancial resources, providing platforms for knowledge sharing, and

strengthening feedback loops between human and natural factors that

can offer learning and adaptation opportunities (Branny et al., 2022; De

Luca, Langemeyer, Va, Bar´

o & Andersson, 2021; Kernaghan & da Silva,

2014; Singletary et al., 2022). In this sense, if governed properly,

technological solutions such as web-based platforms can be used to

strengthen and streamline stakeholder engagement (Nitoslawski, Galle,

Van Den Bosch & Steenberg, 2019).

The socio-ecological approach can also be used to modify human-

nature interactions by optimizing urban-rural linkages and regulating

urbanization patterns and dynamics (Song, Pandey, Dong, Shari &

Subedi, 2022). These could contribute to resilience against adverse

events such as pandemics and/or any other events resulting in supply

chain disruptions (Suleimany, Mokhtarzadeh, & Shari, 2022). As a case

in point, it is widely argued that human encroachment on natural eco-

systems increases the risk of exposure to zoonotic diseases and could

result in pandemics (Shari, 2022; Spencer, Marasco & Eichinger,

2021). Further, unfettered urban expansion can erode urban-rural

linkages that are critical for the social, ecological, and economic resil-

ience of cities and city regions. For instance, the vulnerability of cities

with weakened urban-rural linkages to global supply chain disruptions

was demonstrated during the COVID-19 pandemic (Khor et al., 2022;

Shari, 2022). Multi-level governance approaches considering inter-

linkages between actors and stakeholders across various spatial and

temporal scales can help minimize vulnerability to such disruptions and

enhance urban and regional resilience (Amirzadeh, Sobhaninia, Buck-

man, & Shari, 2023). For instance, multi-level governance that sup-

ports the protection of peri‑urban areas and promotes urban agriculture

can help overcome food insecurity issues in the face of major global

supply chain disruptions (Khor et al., 2022). Based on this, the Food and

Agriculture Organization (FAO) recommends a City-Region Food Sys-

tems approach that calls for a paradigm shift from capital-oriented food

systems to ones largely reliant on collaborative networks of stakeholders

across city regions

. This approach enhances food security, improves

environmental quality, and provides co-benets for resilience against

other adverse events such as ooding (Khor et al., 2022). Supply chain

resilience can be further enhanced by integrating technological

Fig. 4. SETS dimensions and components. Based on the synthesis of the reviewed literature with more input from the following references (Ariyaningsih & Shaw,

2022; H. Chang et al., 2020; Markolf et al., 2018).

https://www.fao.org/in-action/food-for-cities-programme/overview/crfs/

fr/

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Sustainable Cities and Society 99 (2023) 104910

measures into social-ecological systems (Di Paola, Cosimato & Vona,

2023). For instance, urban green infrastructure systems feature in-

teractions between different social, ecological, and technological com-

ponents, thereby providing multiple co-benets for supply chain

resilience, climate change adaptation/mitigation, and human and

ecosystem health and well-being (Ramyar, Ackerman & Johnston, 2021;

Sch¨

afer & Swilling, 2013).

Other examples have also been mentioned in the literature. For

instance, Bixler et al. (2020) discuss how local governments can use sale

tax policies to acquire the budget necessary for environmental protec-

tion in San Antonio, Texas. Since 2000, the public-supported initiative

has enabled the city to generate over $250 million. The budget is

designated for acquiring and preserving 65,000 hectares of land over the

Edwards Aquifer. Additionally, it supports enhancing urban green

infrastructure within the city. In addition to ecosystem protection, the

initiative has contributed to urban resilience against multiple stressors

such as water stress (through aquifer recharge), ooding (through

stormwater inltration), and extreme heat (through mitigating the

urban heat island effect) (Bixler et al., 2020).

As discussed in other sections of this paper, the relationship between

social and ecological dimensions can be mediated by technologies.

Indeed, technology can be utilized to strengthen the coupling between

social and ecological dimensions. For instance, smart solutions and

technologies such as citizen science, virtual reality, wearable sensors,

and the Internet of Things (IoT) can improve feedback mechanisms

between humans and nature, thereby enabling stakeholder engagement

and contributing to better monitoring, protection, and management of

ecosystems and natural resources (Branny et al., 2022). Such technolo-

gies can also facilitate other types of services and benets, such as

enhanced environmental awareness through visualization of human

dependence on nature or real-time information on how to respond to

environmental exposure (Branny et al., 2022). Further, as Wellmann

et al. (2023) argue, in the context of Nature-Based Solutions (NbS),

technology can improve resilience by integrating citizen science and

local knowledge into practices for biodiversity conservation.

3.4.2. Social-technological coupling

Considering interactions between technological infrastructure sys-

tems and social systems is critical for enhancing the resilience of urban

systems (Kim et al., 2022). This is essential to avoid undesirable

trade-offs that may emerge when isolated approaches are adopted. For

instance, the emphasis on technological solutions such as sensor-based

monitoring and management of urban green spaces, within the frame-

work of NbS, can potentially diminish human engagement with nature.

In turn, this may limit opportunities for fostering social capital devel-

opment (Branny et al., 2022). Technological approaches may also erode

the sense of place among urban residents (Branny et al., 2022). This has

implications for resilience building as the sense of place is important for

active engagement in collective actions aimed at planning for, absorp-

tion, recovery from, and adaptation to adverse events (Shari, 2016).

These arguments do not mean that smart technologies should not be

utilized for the management of NbS. Indeed, smart solutions provide

multiple benets, such as enhanced monitoring, and can facilitate

crowdsourced efforts for enhancing ecosystem health. Therefore, better

governance of technologies such as smart solutions is needed to ensure

they will also connect people with each other and nature (Branny et al.,

2022).

In the context of infrastructure management, online platforms

enabled by smart technologies (e.g., “web-based apps, smartphone apps,

GIS-platforms, larger cloud computing systems for data analysis, or

video conferencing suites”) can support evidence-based decision-mak-

ing and offer learning and knowledge-sharing opportunities that

strengthen adaptive capacity (Wellmann et al., 2023, p. 493). Through a

combination of bottom-up and top-down approaches, they can engage

multiple stakeholders (e.g., developers, residents, private sector, man-

agers, etc.) in the co-design and co-implementation of initiatives for

enhancing resilience (Wellmann et al., 2023). It is crucial to involve

vulnerable and marginalized groups in these initiatives, as it can facil-

itate a better understanding of their unique requirements and boost their

abilities to plan, cope with, recover from, and adapt to challenges

(Hasala, Supak & Rivers, 2020). This should be prioritized, given that

adverse events often disproportionately affect vulnerable and margin-

alized groups (Thomas et al., 2019). Engaging such groups, however,

could be challenging given their limited access to technologies and the

precarious living conditions that may deter them from engaging in

collaborative initiatives. Addressing these issues requires support from

economic, nancial, and governance systems. Generally, funding is a

major component of social systems and is key in facilitating interactions

between different components of social-ecological-technological sys-

tems (Kim et al., 2022).

Overall, a better understanding of and attention to the mutually

reinforcing or conicting relationships between social and technological

systems is important to reduce vulnerabilities and accelerate the trans-

formation toward resilience in urban systems (Bixler et al., 2020). This

requires transformations across political, nancial, educational, regu-

latory, and governance structures and policies (Kim et al., 2022). As a

case in point, the transition from siloed to networked and collaborative

governance enables more efcient and effective generation, access, and

sharing of information. Collaborative governance helps mobilize stake-

holders from different sectors to respond and adapt to emerging needs

and collectively manage urban systems toward shared objectives (Bixler

et al., 2020).

3.4.3. Technological-ecological coupling

Technology has traditionally played a key role in human-nature in-

teractions. Humans use technology to efciently harness existing re-

sources to meet their needs and demands. However, due to the limits to

growth, the unsustainable use of technologies has caused major envi-

ronmental problems with socioeconomic ramications in recent de-

cades. For instance, conventional water, energy, building, and

transportation systems (as critical urban infrastructure systems) are

developed with little consideration of the environment (Chen, Long,

Chen, Feng & Hubacek, 2020; Rees & Wackernagel, 2008). To address

this issue, there have been calls for integrated approaches that recognize

the nexus between various systems, such as water, energy, food, and

carbon (Meng, Liu, Liang, Su & Yang, 2019).

The literature emphasizes the need to integrate green and gray

infrastructure to enhance the resilience of urban systems. Benets of

hybrid gray-green infrastructures have been demonstrated across

various sectors such as energy (e.g., photovoltaic-green roofs), water (e.

g., bioswales and rainwater harvesting systems), transportation (e.g.,

green bike lanes), and buildings (e.g., green walls and roofs) (Aboulnaga

& Fouad, 2022; Branny et al., 2022; de S´

a Silva, Bimbato, Balestieri &

Vilanova, 2022; Shaque, Luo & Zuo, 2020). These also provide other

co-benets. For instance, green roofs can also be used for urban farming

(Aboulnaga & Fouad, 2022).

Regarding SETs, the technological-ecological coupling has mainly

been discussed in the context of NbS and smart technologies. Various

ecological systems, such as bioswales, rain harvesting systems, green

facades, green roofs, bio-retention ponds, constructed wetlands, etc.

have been discussed as hybrid technological-ecological solutions that

enhance urban resilience (McPhearson et al., 2022). Creating more

livable, resilient and sustainable cities for current and future generations

is possible by linking technological advancements with green infra-

structure. Moreover, if combined with a transition from conventional

technocratic planning approaches to democratic governance models

that engage citizens in the design and implementation stages, hybrid

technological-ecological solutions can enhance the connection between

individuals and nature (Branny et al., 2022). In addition to providing

co-benets for health and well-being, this can offer opportunities for

better stewardship of natural resources. Investment in hybrid solutions

such as green public transportation networks also offers opportunities to

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Sustainable Cities and Society 99 (2023) 104910

regenerate old and low-income neighborhoods, thereby contributing to

social and economic resilience (Branny et al., 2022).

In addition to the above-mentioned co-benets of hybrid

technological-ecological systems, technological solutions are increas-

ingly utilized to improve the efciency and functionality of ecological

systems. Cities need to regularly monitor green infrastructure as the

poor environmental conditions in urban areas result in high mortality

and disease rates among trees, shorter lifespans, and degradation of

ecosystem services when compared to rural environments (Branny et al.,

2022). Among other technologies, satellite-based remote sensing pro-

vides reliable and cost-efcient means for regularly monitoring vege-

tation functionality in urban areas. Remote sensing enables planners and

urban managers to track the functioning of urban green infrastructure

and the ecosystem services that they provide. The specic spatial and

temporal data obtained from remote sensing allow more timely, effec-

tive, and efcient management of green infrastructure. The data can be

analyzed to assess urban trees’ health and diversity and evaluate the

environmental pressures they face, including droughts and heat waves.

Urban authorities can use these real-time data to swiftly respond to

emerging needs and uctuating conditions if necessary (Branny et al.,

2022; Wellmann et al., 2023).

Apart from remote sensing, other technological solutions (e.g.,

sensor networks, the Internet of Things, smart meters, etc.) are available

to monitor the performance of urban infrastructure. Those could

improve the efciency and functionality of transportation, buildings,

energy, and water systems. Such improvements provide ecological

benets (e.g., reducing energy consumption, stormwater management,

habitat diversication, biodiversity conservation, etc.). They also facil-

itate socioeconomic gains related to cost-efciency, sense of place,

emergency management, etc. (Branny et al., 2022; Wellmann et al.,

2023). Needless to mention, the real-time data sensing and analysis

capacities offered by smart technological solutions allow having a better

understanding of the changing climatic conditions and the necessary

response and adaptation measures that should be taken by technological

and ecological systems (Ariyaningsih & Shaw, 2022).

Overall, technological-ecological coupling offers opportunities to

strengthen different abilities across different stages, including planning

(e.g., foresight capacity), absorption (e.g., exibility), recovery (e.g.,

agility and timely response), and adaptation (e.g., learning and behav-

ioral changes).

3.4.4. Social-ecological-technological coupling

The above-mentioned bilateral couplings between social, ecological,

and technological components demonstrate the signicance of holistic

and integrated approaches for building resilient urban systems. In-

teractions between these components shape the dynamics of urban

systems in a collective way. Attention to and optimal management of

these interactions is critical to developing resilient urban systems (Kim

et al., 2022). Therefore, considering all components is necessary when

taking action to enhance resilience to different hazards and stressors.

One tangible example is urban heat (See Box. 1). Air conditioning is an

essential component of technological solutions increasingly used to

mitigate urban heat. However, it alone cannot effectively solve the issue.

On the one hand, excessive reliance on air conditioning will further

increase the cooling demand by exhausting heated air into the envi-

ronment; on the other hand, low-income groups may not afford air

conditioning systems. Therefore, this technological solution should be

coupled with and embedded into other solutions such as refurbishment

of building infrastructure to promote passive cooling (technological),

expansion of green infrastructure systems to regulate urban microcli-

mate and offer other ecosystem services (ecological), awareness cam-

paigns to enhance adaptive behavior and capacity of people (social), and

institutional and managerial practices to minimize disproportionate

impacts on low-income and vulnerable groups.

Kim et al. (2022) explain how the SETS approach has been adopted

to deal with extreme heat in Phoenix, Arizona. As temperatures rise

during the summer season in the city, the electrical demand for cooling

also escalates. This surge in demand pushes the power grid to its critical

limits and can result in power outages that have severe consequences,

including loss of life. While technical measures such as upgrading old

electrical infrastructure and installing backup generators are necessary

to solve this problem, they cannot be considered stand-alone solutions

due to cost implications and limitations posed by extreme weather

conditions. Therefore, alternative solutions become necessary. To this

end, local authorities have been collaborating with vulnerable com-

munities by adopting a systemic approach that leverages diverse sus-

tainable energy transition strategies embedded in social solutions, such

as educational programs aimed at teaching children safe practices for

handling heat during summer breaks and provision of funds to home-

owners to improve their homes’ insulation. Such initiatives are essential

for enhancing adaptive capacity. In addition, investment in the expan-

sion of green infrastructure and shading has been adopted as strategic

ecological measures to reduce ambient air temperature. This combined

SETS approach provides a comprehensive solution to the problem of

power grid failure and contributes to climate change adaptation and

mitigation (Kim et al., 2022). While not discussed in the reviewed

literature, integrated SETS approaches can also be utilized to improve

resilience to extreme cold. As a case in point, Balsas (2021) show how

the underground space can be optimized to design walkable environ-

ments during cold winters in Albany, New York, thereby contributing to

socioeconomic resilience. This requires considering interactions among

multiple factors, such as building design guidelines, aesthetics, and

climatic conditions.

An exemplary case of technological innovation is the development of

digital tree inventories, which have been made possible through satel-

lite- and sensor-based monitoring techniques. These advanced tools are

capable of providing instant and up-to-date information about the status

of urban greenery and soil health. As a result, they play an essential role

in identifying when human intervention becomes necessary to ensure

that these vital elements remain healthy within our cities’ ecosystem. By

enabling real-time data analysis, this innovative solution provides pol-

icymakers with valuable insights into their decision-making processes

concerning urban planning policies and environmental management

practices. The application of this methodology guarantees a deeper level

of communication between humans and nature, ultimately resulting in

an augmentation of urban forest management that can effectively sus-

tain healthy tree growth, ensure the survival of trees, and maintain

ecological balance amidst challenging city environments. Looking at it

from a SET standpoint, such innovative techniques hold promising po-

tential for promoting responsible environmental behavior amongst in-

dividuals by fostering attentiveness toward urban biodiversity

conservation efforts. They could help increase human awareness about

sustainability concerns within cities - enabling efcient maintenance

methods to strengthen environmental resilience while bolstering

biodiversity levels across metropolitan areas (Branny et al., 2022).

The Melbourne Urban Forest- Visual program also serves as an

exemplary initiative that strives to promote active social engagement by

employing various strategies. Through the utilization of a state-of-the-

art digital platform, it encourages citizens to delve deeper into the in-

tricacies of their city’s publicly managed urban forest ecosystem. By

providing access to ‘big tree data,’ individuals can initiate discussions

and gain insights about vital aspects such as ecosystem services. This

system meticulously tracks approximately 70,000 trees under municipal

ownership in Melbourne, including essential details concerning each

tree’s health status and projected lifespan. The interface facilitates easy

navigation for users since all trees on public right of way are strategi-

cally placed on an interactive map alongside comprehensive site-specic

information highlighting current diversity levels and canopy cover sta-

tistics, among other performance metrics within the greater context of

the urban forest landscape. What sets this innovative program apart

from others is its ability to empower residents with invaluable tools

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Sustainable Cities and Society 99 (2023) 104910

designed explicitly for visualization purposes while also promoting un-

derstanding regarding the unique values of the city’s diverse ecosys-

tems. The implementation of this strategy in 2012 has enabled the City

of Melbourne to acquire citizens’ social-ecological viewpoints on trees

and effectively interact with their diverse and subjective attitudes to-

ward them. As a result, thousands of trees have been planted every year

through citizens’ participation (Branny et al., 2022).

The examples discussed above serve as a powerful illustration of the

remarkable potency that social-ecological-technological approaches

hold in boosting urban resilience and fostering positive socioeconomic

outcomes. Moreover, their potential for addressing pressing urban

challenges through multifaceted systemic tactics cannot be overstated.

By taking a holistic approach to problem-solving, these strategies offer

transformative solutions that go beyond supercial xes and create

lasting impacts at every level of society. More opportunities for the

promotion of coupled social-ecological-technological approaches can

emerge with the rapid technological advances. For instance, disruptive

technologies such as digital twins or metaverse may make it easier to

adopt systems-based approaches to examine various interactions across

social, economic, ecological, and technological domains. They may also

facilitate a better engagement of different stakeholders in actions toward

urban resilience.

4. Summary and conclusions

To effectively promote sustainable and resilient urban futures and

address the complex challenges faced by cities, it is imperative that we

undertake transformative changes in the way our cities are designed,

built, and managed. Urban planners must collaborate closely with other

experts and stakeholders, including architects, ecologists, engineers, and

policy makers, to create innovative solutions for various issues such as

climate change, resource depletion, and social inequality. This collab-

orative approach should not be limited to professionals alone; govern-

ment bodies at various levels must join hands with private entities and

local communities to bring about these necessary changes. This collec-

tive effort will foster sustainable growth while ensuring equitable access

to resources across all urban areas - regardless of socioeconomic back-

ground or geographic location (Bixler et al., 2020).

The incorporation of transdisciplinary approaches is necessary as

urban systems entail complex dynamics that cannot be comprehensively

understood through any specialized disciplinary perspective (Bixler

et al., 2020; Hamborg, Meya, Eisenack & Raabe, 2020; McPhearson

et al., 2022). Such transdisciplinary and integrated approaches will

facilitate better linkages between urban systems’ social, ecological, and

technological components. Otherwise, siloed approaches that fail to

Box 1

An example of SETS approach for addressing urban heat.

The SETS approach can help planners and policy makers deal with urban heat issues. Among other things, it can help address trade-offs that may

emerge when isolated or bilateral measures are taken. For instance, as shown in Figure below Fig. 5, air conditioning as a technological (T)

measure may fail to address the heat issue as it can cause positive feedback loops (i.e., further intensify urban heat through heat exhaust) and

may also not be affordable. Isolated ecological (E) measures such as urban greening may also have limited impact due to distribution and

accessibility issues. Similarly, social (S) measures such as promoting behavioral changes to reduce reliance on air conditioning may not be

sufcient due to limits to adaptation. Bilateral approaches can address these issues to some extent. For example: integrating green infrastructure

into building design technologies (T-E) reduced the demand for cooling; institutional measures to ensure equitable distribution of urban

greenery (S-E) helps reducing disproportionate impacts on certain social groups; and funding to enhance building insulation (S-T) reduces

demand for air conditioning. Combining all these measures (S-E-T) allows minimizing potential trade-offs and maximizes synergies.

Fig. 5. An example showing how the SETS approach can provide opportunities for addressing urban heat challenges in cities.

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Sustainable Cities and Society 99 (2023) 104910

consider complex interactions between different components may be

followed. When different social, ecological, and technological compo-

nents are linked to each other, a system is likely to be more resilient and

capable of enduring risk. In other words, systems that only pay attention

to one component are more vulnerable (Hamborg et al., 2020).

Adopting SET approaches also helps avoid trade-offs. Indeed, trade-

offs may emerge as socio-technical approaches may exclude ecological

issues, socio-ecological approaches may overlook the role of technology,

and technological-ecological issues could have negative impacts on the

social sphere (Bixler et al., 2019; Iwaniec, Cook, Davidson,

Berbes-Blazquez & Grimm, 2020). For example, investments in green

infrastructure have the potential to enhance the desirability of resi-

dential areas resulting in elevated property values. Consequently, in-

dividuals with limited nancial resources may be compelled to relocate

and inadvertently become more susceptible to natural hazards that

nature-based remedies are meant to mitigate. To circumvent such

inadvertent outcomes associated with green gentrication, it is neces-

sary to pay greater attention to comprehending the interrelationships

between social dynamics, ecological factors, and technology involved

therein McPhearson et al. (2022). Indeed, studies indicate that green

infrastructure projects which are not inclusive and lack effective plan-

ning can result in heightened levels of social inequality, as individuals

from underprivileged backgrounds may be compelled to relocate or

denied access to the advantages offered by enhanced ecosystem services

(Ward et al., 2019). SETS approach also takes into account the various

trade-offs that arise with respect to scale. By adopting this approach, one

can ensure that boosting resilience at a certain scale does not come at the

expense of reduced resilience at other scales. Adopting this compre-

hensive approach makes it possible to understand better and address the

complex urban dynamics vital for promoting sustainable development

across different scales (Olsson et al., 2014).

The SETS approach also has the potential to prevent cities from

becoming locked-in into unfavorable trajectories with implications for

the people and the planet. It is argued that self-perpetuating social,

ecological, and technological feedback can result in lock-ins that impede

transitions to different regimes or trajectories. This inclination toward

lock-in into established patterns has a negative impact on the ability to

adapt effectively to emerging challenges and possibilities (Olsson et al.,

2014). A case in point is technological lock-in, when the emphasis on

improving specic characteristics such as resistance and robustness

comes at the cost of compromising others like exibility and adapt-

ability. The implementation of technological xes to bolster short-term

preparedness can impede transformative resilience and amplify

long-term vulnerabilities (Butler et al., 2017; Munoz-Erickson et al.,

2021). Holistic and plural approaches allow accounting for emerging

threats through proper preparatory, response, and adaptation measures.

Despite its signicance, the task of integrating these research areas

presents signicant challenges, primarily due to the distinct values and

characteristics inherent in social, ecological, and technological elds.

Historically, each eld has been explored independently, leading to a

lack of emphasis on their integration. This deciency may have also

been translated into implementation and practice. Indeed, technological

advancement has frequently taken place without sufcient consider-

ation for maintaining ecological or social integrity; moreover, it tends

towards a top-down approach while disregarding user needs and pref-

erences (Mehvar et al., 2021; Olsson et al., 2014).

In order to successfully integrate SETs approaches and tackle urban

challenges, it is crucial to implement multi-level and polycentric

governance strategies. These strategies are essential as they cover

various spatial and temporal scales, enabling a comprehensive under-

standing of the resilience cycles in cities while linking different social-

ecological and technological aspects. Nevertheless, implementing

these measures poses signicant difculties as it requires operating

across multiple political entities that may have conicting interests or

priorities. The challenge lies in inuencing key intervention areas and

actors that are widely dispersed geographically and temporally;

additionally, they may not always be easily accessible (Bixler et al.,

2020; Smith & Stirling, 2010).

Despite the various challenges faced, we hope this study will expand

our understanding of the intricate concept of social-ecological-

technological resilience and allow improved communication of its

principles to interested stakeholders. One key issue to be mentioned is

that the literature is dominated by epistemological approaches, and

limited empirical research exists. Accordingly, the insights reported here

may offer limited practical lessons to facilitate better operationalization

of the concept. To address this issue, we suggest conducting case studies

in different contexts that show real-world examples of resilience in the

context of SETS. Another limitation of this study is that we have relied

only on peer-reviewed literature indexed in the WoS and Scopus. We call

for future studies that also examine gray literature and technical reports

to better reect discussions from other sectors such as policy. Including a

broader range of literature and insights from different stakeholders

could also provide means to developing standards and guidelines for

assessing the resilience of SETS. Furthermore, as this is a concept in

transition, follow-up studies are needed to understand SETS and their

dynamics better. Such studies should also examine how the SETS

approach is aligned with and related to other approaches to conceptu-

alize urban resilience (e.g., ‘ecological-social-economic). That would

allow developing a more comprehensive approach that considers mul-

tiple aspects of urban resilience. In turn, this would also help to un-

derstand better how SETS approach can integrate innovative and

disruptive solutions to deal with emerging risks that may undermine

urban resilience. Finally, this review showed that the literature is

dominated by studies that focus on certain stressors (e.g., heat) in the

context of specic sectors (e.g., NbS). Future research should further

examine the resilience of SETS in context of other stressors and sectors to

obtain a more comprehensive understanding.

Declaration of Competing Interest

The authors declare that they have no known competing nancial

interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to inuence

the work reported in this paper.

Data availability

Data will be made available on request.

Appendix

Search string

=(("social-ecological-technical" OR "social, ecological, and

technical" OR "social, ecological, technical" OR "socio-ecological and

technical" OR "socio-ecological-technical" OR "social, ecological, and

technological" OR “social-ecological-technolog*" OR "social, ecological,

and technolog*" OR "social, ecological, technolog*" OR "socio-ecological

and technolog*" OR "socio-ecological- technolog*" OR "social, ecolog-

ical, and technolog*" OR “social-ecological- infrastructur*" OR "social,

ecological, and infrastructur*" OR "social, ecological, infrastructur*" OR

"socio-ecological and infrastructur*" OR "socio-ecological- infra-

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OR “social-ecological system* and social-technical system*” OR “socio-

ecological system* and socio-technical system*” OR “socio-ecological

system* and social-technical system*” OR “social-ecological system*

and socio-technological system*” OR “social-ecological system* and

social- technological system*” OR “socio-ecological system* and socio-

Note that this is the search string used in WoS. For Scopus, we have used the

TITLE-ABS-KEY eld.

A. Shari

Sustainable Cities and Society 99 (2023) 104910

technological system*” OR “socio-ecological system* and social- tech-

nological system*” OR “social-ecological system* and socio-

infrastructur* system*” OR “social-ecological system* and social-

infrastructur*system*” OR “socio-ecological system* and socio- infra-

structur*system*” OR “socio-ecological system* and social- infra-

structur*system*” OR “socio-eco-technical” OR “SETS” OR “SET”) AND

(“urban resilience” OR “resilient cities” OR “city resilience” OR “resil-

ient city” OR “resilient urban”))

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A Unified Framework for Evaluating the Resilience of Critical Infrastructure: Delphi Survey Approach

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Jun 2024

This study advocates establishing an indicator system for Critical Infrastructures (CIs) resilience assessment to ensure consistency and comparability in future endeavors. Resilience has emerged as a fundamental framework for effectively managing the performance of CIs in response to the challenges posed by disaster events. However, it is evident that a lack of uniformity exists in the choice and standardization of resilience assessment frameworks across the identified frameworks. This paper proposes key attributes for facilitating resilience assessment of the CIs using an in-depth literature survey for identification and two rounds of the Delphi survey in Sri Lankan Context for their verification. The outcome of the literature survey has analyzed the resilience assessment attributes under four types of capacities of resilience assessment: planning (anticipative), absorptive, restorative, and adaptive. Twenty-seven resilience attributes (Planning: 6; Absorptive: 12; Restorative: 6; Adaptive: 3) under different capacities were identified, including sub-indicators for evaluating each resilience attribute. The outcomes of the Delphi survey were analyzed through descriptive statistics. The proposed attributes received high levels of agreement from the experts, indicating their suitability and applicability for assessing the resilience of the CIs. The mean ratings of the attributes varied from 4.0 to 5.0, with the majority exceeding 4.5. The evaluation of these attributes will be useful for assessing the resilience capacity of the CIs and thereby to model the overall resilience of the CIs. The results of this study will provide a solid basis for formulating hypotheses in future research aimed at assessing CI resilience.

Spatial analysis of the physical resilience of old urban neighborhoods against earthquakes: a case study of the old texture of Tehran

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May 2024
GeoJournal

During their growth, cities reach a point where they need to renew their structures. At this stage of urban growth, part of the urban environment with less livability as well as non-compliance with the current needs of citizens gets to be known as urban old neighborhoods. These neighborhoods are always exposed to all kinds of damage due to physical decay, inappropriate access, poor service facilities and inefficient infrastructure. One of the most serious and destructive types of damage is the one caused by earthquakes, which not only affects the physical aspect of urban textures but also leads to social and economic crises. The aim of this research is to measure the physical-environmental resilience of old neighborhoods and analyze the factors affecting it. The sources of the data in this regard are the census of the Iranian Statistics Center, the Detailed Plan, the Organization of Urban Renovation, and the district municipalities in 2022. With the consensus of experts' opinions, 10 out of 23 indicators were selected to achieve the aims of the research. As the standard indicators were combined, an urban area with a cluster of 123 old neighborhoods was selected as the statistical population of the research. The entropy method was used to assess how important each indicator of physical-environmental resilience was. The rates of physical resilience and environmental resilience were determined through overlaying the corresponding layers by the GIS software, and the final resilience was calculated with the geometric mean values. The geographically weighted regression (GWR) method was also used to analyze the factors affecting the final resilience. The findings indicate that old urban neighborhoods have much lower physical resilience than the other urban textures, but the rate of resilience is different among old urban neighborhoods. Moreover, in each neighborhood, the physical resilience of housing and the environmental resilience are different, which is caused by the highly different conditions of the neighborhoods in terms of resilience indicators. Also, the finesse of residential units, distance from the fire station, and access to green and open public spaces emerged to be the factors that play major roles in physical-environmental resilience. Being aware of what causes the vulnerability of old textures can be useful to solve their problems, improve their resilience against earthquakes, and provide information to local stakeholders.

A spatial evaluation framework of urban physical resilience considering different phases of disaster risk management

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Jun 2024
NAT HAZARDS

The physical structure of urban settlements has become increasingly vulnerable to hazards following the growing trends of natural hazards, including earthquakes. The concept of resilience has gained momentum to facilitate better planning and response to such hazards. This research seeks to develop a conceptual spatial framework considering different phases of disaster risk management to evaluate urban physical resilience. Twenty indicators that define urban structure are identified and included in an Interpretive Structural Modeling—Analytic Network Process (ISM-ANP) hybrid model for analysis. The model and the indicator weights are adjusted using statistical and optimization techniques. District 4 of Tehran has been selected as the study area, and the proposed evaluation framework is applied to several zones with different physical urban structures. According to the results, the most important indicators of urban structure are the Robustness of Buildings, Street Width, Building Density, and Aspect Ratio. Sensitivity analysis and scenario-making are performed to explore the desired state of urban physical resilience for each zone. The results of the case study indicate moderate levels of urban physical resilience. The study provides more clear and practical insights into the concept of resilience to help urban planners and decision-makers improve urban physical resilience.

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May 2024

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Urban landscape sustainability in Karst mountainous cities: a landscape resilience perspective

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Full-text available

May 2024

In the context of the rapid progress of global urbanization, the massive encroachment of social landscapes into ecological and productive landscapes has led to a series of environmental problems. Furthermore, analyzing the landscape resilience could effectively reveal the sustainable development ability of the urban landscape. This study establishes a social-ecological productive landscape resilience (SEPLR) evaluation system and reveals trade-offs and synergies between different landscape types and resilience. Finally, this study provides landscape management zonings based on the spatial and temporal dynamic characteristics of landscape resilience and subsystem resilience. The findings showed that: (1) The CUAG has significant landscape heterogeneity and change drastically, which is mainly manifested by the massive encroachment of social landscape into productive landscape. (2) The SEPLR of CUAG decreased slightly by 0.75 % over the decade, with significant changes of spatial distribution. (3) The comprehensive remediation areas and social development areas are the dominant management zones. The findings could be incorporated into the decision-making of land use trade-off development in CUAG to promote the coordinated development of social-ecological productive systems and improve the sustainability of urban landscape.

Future urban ecological land transition and its implications for high-heat exposure in China

Article

Jun 2024

Assessing and Mapping Urban Ecological Resilience Using the Loss-Gain Approach: A Case Study of Tehran, Iran

Article

Jan 2024

Enhancing landslide hazard prevention: Mapping vulnerability via considering the effects of human factors

Article

Jun 2024

Justice in access to urban ecosystem services: A critical review of the literature

Article

Jun 2024

Ecosystem services are crucial for urban resilience, climate change adaptation and mitigation, and sustainable development. Incorporating these services in urban environments involves various principles, partnerships, organizational strategies, and methodologies. A vast body of research exists on ecosystem services. However, there is a lack of studies that address equity concerns in access to urban ecosystem services. This paper critically reviews the literature to investigate the state of access to ecosystem services in urban areas. We use deductive content analysis for this purpose. We explore traditional concepts of justice and update them by examining the sources and types of ecosystem services in urban environments. We examine justice typology considering various social, environmental, infrastructural, ecological, and mobility issues. We also explore different justice dimensions, including distributional, procedural, recognitional, and restorative issues. Results showed a notable prioritization of green infrastructures (73%) over blue infrastructures (5%). Furthermore, there has been an apparent emphasis on cultural services (42%) and regulating services (25%) in offering recreational activities, fostering social integration, improving place-making capabilities, showcasing adaptability, and demonstrating resilience. An important finding is that most of the publications (87%) highlight that there is no justice in access to ecosystem services. Regarding typologies, we found that there has been more attention to environmental justice, and infrastructural, ecological, and mobility justice are underexplored. As for dimensions, more attention has been paid to distributional and recognitional justice at the cost of restorative justice. A key shortcoming is that cities in the Global South are not adequately represented in the literature, despite their significance for achieving sustainable urban development in the coming decades.

Decoding the epics of sustainable world: Sustainalism

Article

Jan 2024

Reinforcing nature-based solutions through tools providing social-ecological-technological integration

Article

Full-text available

Mar 2023
AMBIO

While held to be a means for climate change adaptation and mitigation, nature-based solutions (NbS) themselves are vulnerable to climate change. To find ways of compensating for this vulnerability we combine a focused literature review on how information technology has been used to strengthen positive social–ecological–technological feedback, with the development of a prototype decision-support tool. Guided by the literature review, the tool integrates recent advances in using globally available remote sensing data to elicit information on functional diversity and ecosystem service provisioning with information on human service demand and population vulnerability. When combined, these variables can inform climate change adaptation strategies grounded in local social–ecological realities. This type of integrated monitoring and packaging information to be actionable have potential to support NbS management and local knowledge building for context-tailored solutions to societal challenges in urban environments.

Integration of SETS (Social–Ecological–Technological Systems) Framework and Flood Resilience Cycle for Smart Flood Risk Management

Article

Full-text available

Sep 2022

The concept of “water smart city” is increasingly being recognized as a new approach to managing urban environments (including urban floods), especially in the context of developing countries, such as Indonesia. While Indonesia’s national capital relocation plan is expected to attract significant human migration to two nearby cities, Samarinda City and the port city of Balikpapan, these cities have continuously faced with severe risk of flooding. Therefore, this research proposes a flood management approach by reviewing the local city government’s flood risk management strategies and the smart city plan to enhance flood resilience. The integration of the SETS (Social–Ecological–Technological systems) framework and the Flood Resilience Cycle is undertaken to determine the state of flood management, which is followed by a review of smart city plans and programs in two selected cities (Samarinda and Balikpapan). The research mainly identifies how it can be implemented in the two selected cities based on SETS–FRC distribution. In accordance with the SETS–FRC (Flood Resilience Cycle) framework, it is revealed that both these cities have a higher emphasis on the flood prevention phase, as compared to other resilience phases. Based on the overall results, this study emphasizes the implementation of a water smart city concept for effective and smart flood risk management.

An overview and thematic analysis of research on cities and the COVID-19 pandemic: Toward just, resilient, and sustainable urban planning and design

Article

Full-text available

Oct 2022

Ayyoob Sharifi

Since early 2020, researchers have made efforts to study various issues related to cities and the pandemic. Despite the wealth of research on this topic, there are only a few review articles that explore multiple issues related to it. This is partly because of the rapid pace of publications that makes systematic literature review challenging. To address this issue, in the present study, we rely on bibliometric analysis techniques to gain an overview of the knowledge structure and map key themes and trends of research on cities and the pandemic. Results of the analysis of 2,799 articles show that research mainly focuses on six broad themes: air quality, meteorological factors, built environment factors, transportation, socio-economic disparities, and smart cities, with the first three being dominant. Based on the findings, we discuss major lessons that can be learned from the pandemic and highlight key areas that need further research.

Evaluating stakeholder engagement in collaborative research: co-producing knowledge for climate resilience

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Full-text available

Aug 2022

This study describes the development, implementation, and evaluation of an initial stakeholder engagement experience designed to facilitate knowledge co-production. The engagement experience is part of a collaborative research framework (CRF), which facilitates iterative interactions among diverse researchers and stakeholders around the topic of enhanced climate resilience. Here, we describe the: (1) need for and development of a CRF as it relates to stakeholder engagement and knowledge co-production; (2) implementation of the initial engagement experience, focused around individual semi-structured interviews, in the context of a snow-dependent, arid river basin where historical water over allocation, climate change, and diversified water uses challenge the basin’s resilience; and (3) formative evaluation of the engagement experience using an online survey to inform the development of more effective engagement practices. Results of the evaluation indicate that, after participating, most stakeholders understand and recognize the importance of research goals, demonstrate positive attitudes toward collaborative research and researchers, view their contribution of knowledge and expertise as critical to research, and perceive researchers as eager to use their expertise. Moreover, stakeholders emphasized various context-specific goals for knowledge co-production, such as finding innovative ways to adapt to increased competition for diminishing water supplies. To achieve these goals, stakeholders suggested researchers learn about their basin, including its water allocation history and agricultural practices. These results highlight the importance of centering stakeholder engagement experiences within a broader CRF and formatively evaluating such experiences to adapt them to achieve research goals.

The Planner’s Pentangle: A Proposal for a Twenty-First-Century Model of Plannin g

Article

Mar 2023
J PLAN EDUC RES

The planner’s triangle—the model that visually defined planning as the balance of equity, economy, and environment to achieve sustainability—has influenced theory, practice, and pedagogy for a quarter of a century. We argue that the triangle requires updating. Even if sustainability remains the center of planning’s conceptual model, the vertices must be rethought. We propose a planner’s pentangle with five priorities as vertices: Wellness, Equity, Economy, Environment, and Esthetics (WE ⁴ ). The pentangle concept represents planning’s history more comprehensively. It also more accurately represents the state of planning in the twenty-first century when health/wellness and cultural/esthetic concerns are increasingly important.

Ecological, Engineering and Community Resilience Policy Adoption in Large US Cities

Article

Jan 2023

This paper seeks to identify which resilience-oriented policies are being enacted and factors that influence policy adoption. We develop clusters of policies related to three types of resilience: ecological, engineering, and community. Among large U.S. cities, we find wide variation in the number and type of policies enacted. Through multivariate analysis, we identify factors that are associated with the adoption of these policies. Similar to earlier work on sustainability and climate change policy, our results show that larger cities are more likely to adopt all three types of resilience policies. Wealthier and liberal cities adopt more ecological resilience policies. Cities that are members of city networks also adopt more policies, but not all networks significantly influence policy adoption suggesting that network goals and connections are important. We also find that among these large cities, it is the smaller of them that appear to benefit most from membership in networks.

Be resilient today to be sustainable tomorrow: Different perspectives in global supply chains

Article

Dec 2022
J CLEAN PROD

Towards building resilient cities to pandemics: A review of COVID-19 literature

Article

Nov 2022

With the global prevalence of COVID-19 disease, the concept of urban resilience against pandemics has drawn the attention of a wide range of researchers, urban planners, and policymakers. This study aims to identify the major dimensions and principles of urban resilience to pandemics through a systematic review focused on lessons learned from the COVID-19 pandemic and comparing different perspectives regarding resilient urban environments to such diseases. Based on the findings, the study proposes a conceptual framework and a series of principles of urban resilience to pandemics, consisting of four spatial levels: housing, neighborhoods, city, and the regional and national scales, and three dimensions of pandemic resilience: pandemic-related health requirements, environmental psychological principles, and general resilience principles. The findings show that resilient cities should be able to implement the pandemic-related health requirements, the psychological principles of the environment to reduce the stresses caused by the pandemic, and the general principles of resilience in the smart city context. This framework provides scholars and policymakers with a comprehensive understanding of resilience on different scales and assists them in making better-informed decisions.

The Role of Nature-Based Solutions in Supporting Social-Ecological Resilience for Climate Change Adaptation

Article

Sep 2022

Social-ecological systems underpinning nature-based solutions (NbS) must be resilient to changing conditions if they are to contribute to long-term climate change adaptation. We develop a two-part conceptual framework linking social-ecological resilience to adaptation outcomes in NbS. Part one determines the potential of NbS to support resilience based on assessing whether NbS affect key mechanisms known to enable resilience. Examples include social-ecological diversity, connectivity, and inclusive decision-making. Part two includes adaptation outcomes that building social-ecological resilience can sustain, known as nature's contributions to adaptation (NCAs). We apply the framework to a global dataset of NbS in forests. We find evidence that NbS may be supporting resilience by influencing many enabling mechanisms. NbS also deliver many NCAs such as flood and drought mitigation. However, there is less evidence for some mechanisms and NCAs critical for resilience to long-term uncertainty. We present future research questions to ensure NbS can continue to support people and nature in a changing world. Expected final online publication date for the Annual Review of Environment and Resources, Volume 47 is October 2022. Please see http://www.annualreviews.org/page/journal/pubdates for revised estimates.

Ecological–social–economic system health diagnosis and sustainable design of high-density cities: An urban agglomeration perspective

Article

Sep 2022

Affected by various urban diseases, the sustainable development of high-density cities (HDCs) is under tremendous pressure. The health evaluation methods of HDCs, such as the emergy method and urban health index evaluation method, have difficulties in reflecting the internal mechanism of the system with non-uniform evaluation indices. The Emergy Coupling Coordination Health Diagnosis Model (ECCHDM) was proposed to study the health of sustainable cities and the design mechanisms. The Yangzi River urban agglomeration is taken as an example for practical research. Results show that: (1) ECCHDM is reliable and reasonable in investigating and evaluating the mechanism and health of urban systems; (2) In the high-quality development stage of HDCs in developing countries, ecosystem quality remains a decisive factor for HDCs health, while the main influencing factor is social system development level. (3) In 2018, 50% of the cities in the Yangzi River urban agglomeration are in a healthy state and 50% are in a sub-health state. The proposed research methods can also be applied in the planning and design of HDCs in other developing countries.

Resilience of Urban Social-Ecological-Technological Systems (SETS): A Review

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