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Watershed Planning within a Quantitative Scenario Analysis Framework
Published on: July 24, 2016
Assessing urban resilience in Northwest China using a resistance-recovery-adaptability framework and explainable
Yun Ji1, Jijun Meng1, Likai Zhu2
1Key Laboratory of Earth Surface Processes of Ministry of Education, College of Urban and Environmental Sciences, Peking University, PR China.
Journal of Environmental Management
|August 6, 2026
Summary
Urban resilience in Northwest China cities increased, but unevenly, with capitals outperforming peripheral areas. Key factors include GDP, population dynamics, and water, with infrastructure and R&D investment as major obstacles.
Area of Science:
- Urban resilience
- Risk governance
- Arid region development
Background:
- Cities face increasing external shocks from climate change and human activities.
- Urban resilience, using the Resistance-Recovery-Adaptability (RRA) framework, is crucial for risk governance in ecologically fragile regions like Northwest China.
- Systematic resilience assessments and nonlinear dynamic analyses are insufficient for these cities.
Purpose of the Study:
- To evaluate the resilience of 33 prefectural-level cities in Northwest China from 2000 to 2020 using an RRA-based index system.
- To identify key influencing factors on urban resilience in this region.
- To support high-quality urban development in arid regions.
Main Methods:
- Developed an RRA-based index system covering economic, social, and ecological subsystems.
- Applied XGBoost-SHAP (Extreme Gradient Boosting-SHapley Additive exPlanations) for nonlinear dynamic analysis and factor identification.
- Analyzed data for 33 prefectural-level cities in Northwest China over a 20-year period (2000-2020).
Main Results:
- Overall urban resilience in Northwest China showed an increasing trend, but with significant uneven distribution.
- Provincial capitals exhibited much faster resilience growth compared to peripheral prefectures.
- Gross Domestic Product (GDP) was the most significant positive contributor; population dynamics showed spatial heterogeneity and turning points; water factors exhibited nonlinear effects.
Conclusions:
- Urban resilience in Northwest China is growing but unevenly, highlighting disparities between major urban centers and surrounding areas.
- Critical obstacles to resilience include inadequate water infrastructure, insufficient Research and Development (R&D) investment, and low consumption vitality.
- Findings provide crucial insights for arid-region resilience research and inform strategies for sustainable, high-quality urban development in Northwest China.
