UREx Sustainability Research Network

The vision of the Urban Resilience to Extremes Sustainability Research Network was to promote transitioning to cities of the future, resilient by virtue of their flexible, adaptable, socially equitable and ecologically-based infrastructure in the face of higher incidence of extreme events, more culturally diverse communities and continued pressure on urbanization.

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The UREx Sustainability Research Network focused on integrating social, ecological and technical systems to devise, analyze and support urban infrastructure decisions in the face of climatic uncertainty.

UREx was a comprehensive network that worked to build the scientific basis to support existing and emerging city initiatives, and to incorporate fundamental and practical strategies that would promote urban resilience from a social-ecological-technical/infrastructural system dimensions and sustainability approach. This work was conducted through the following:

• Assembling technical knowledge about infrastructure, climate, hydrology, demography and institutions.
• Quantifying interactions and feedbacks in social-ecological-technical/infrastructural system dimensions models from diverse sources of information.
• Understanding organizations that build and manage infrastructure and their contexts.
• Considering social norms that shape acceptability of infrastructure.
• Capturing values and visions of various stakeholders for a more desirable future.

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