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Resilient urban systems:
a socio-technical study of community scale climate change adaptation initiatives
7.1
Recommendations for future research
The value of this pilot research lies in the capacity of the findings to assist in the assessment and provision
of resilient urban energy and water systems. However, as only two case studies were able to be investigated
in this pilot project, the findings should be treated as indicative and preliminary. Further research is needed
to verify and test their validity, in particular, (a) a longitudinal approach is needed to allow comparison of case
studies over time, and (b) further case studies are needed across a broader and larger range of situations
form which patterns can be generalised.
In particular, further case studies should examine the role (if any) of community scale in the development
and maintenance of community resilience involving energy and water systems. The two case studies here
are of quite different sizes but the dataset is insufficient to draw general conclusions about the role of scale
at this stage. Further study should also include reticulated systems as a point of comparison with alternative
and mixed systems, and involve longitudinal assessments of system resilience and the role of intermediaries
in maintaining/increasing this resilience. This will inform the further development of the preliminary criteria
for resilient urban systems developed here. These criteria would be available for policy makers, planners,
developers and builders to ensure that our rapidly expanding population is a resilient one, prepared for short
term faults and disturbances, as well as future uncertainty.
The adoption and use of assessment criteria for resilient urban systems would add to the growing number
of tools emerging for assessing, evaluating or measuring the performance of urban areas according to
various metrics. How resilience criteria might interact with these other measures, which include ecological
footprinting, liveability and/or happiness indices, and other planning tools for urban sustainability emerging
in Australia, is another area demanding further research to ensure that gains in one area do not result in
perverse outcomes for another.