Investigation the dimensions influencing urban resilience using Interpretive Structural Modeling (ISM) (Case study: Ahwaz city)

Background and by urbanization development, the issues such as urban resilience have attracted the attention for stabling the cities against natural and human disasters. Occurrence of disasters such as floods, earthquakes and hurricanes often have a devastating impact on human settlements, destroy houses and infrastructure, and impose massive socioeconomic effects on communities. Investigation of dimensions influencing urban resilience is in fact studying the way that the social, economic, institutional, political and administrative capacities of communities influence increasing the resilience against natural and human disasters. In this regard, the present research aims to investigate and explain the dimensions influencing urban resilience in Ahwaz city.
The present study is an applied research in terms of the purpose and a descriptive – analytical research in terms of the method. In the present study, the economic, institutional-administrative, physical-environmental, infrastructural, social, and environmental dimensions have been investigated as the most important dimensions affecting the resiliency of the city. The Interpretive Structural Modeling(ISM) method was used in order to analyze which is based on expert opinions. For this reason, the views of 15 experts in the field of urban planning and municipal officials in Ahvaz have been used. Then, the collected opinions have been analyzed in Excel software using ISM.
Findings: The results show that the effective dimensions were placed in five levels as follows: The highest level is related to the economic dimension; Physical-environmental and institutional-administrative dimensions have been placed in the second level; infrastructural dimension is in the third level; social dimension is in the fourth level, and the lowest level is related to the environmental dimension. Also in the MICMAC analysis, the economic, institutional-administrative, physical-environmental and infrastructural dimensions have been placed in driver cluster; the social dimension has been placed in linkage cluster, and the environmental dimension has been placed in dependent cluster.
the conducted leveling indicates that if no attention is paid to the economic field, the citizen's economic issues and the justice of equal economical enjoyment and outcome, the people's tendency to participate in the components such as cooperation and educational programs, the expanding and development plans , protecting the substructures and environment protection will be decreased and components such as poor neighborhoods, foreworn contextures and rusty living areas are increasingly expanding because the citizens are reluctant to participate in the constructive plans.