Urban resilience: A conceptual framework

•Urban resilience is based on four basic pillars: resisting, recovering, adapting and transforming.•Urban resilience can be divided in five dimensions: natural, economic, social, physical and institutional.•The five most relevant urban resilience characteristics are: redundancy, robustness, adaptation, resources and innovation.•There are a lack of tools and methods to evaluate and improve resilience of urban systems. Nowadays, natural disasters and human actions are considered uncertain, unpredictable urban threats. Therefore, cities must respond more quickly and more effectively to anticipate and minimize the associated consequences and dangers. Promoting urban resilience in relation to environmental, socioeconomic and political domains has increasingly attracted the attention of researchers and local authorities. Thus, this article reviewed the scientific and technical literature about urban resilience highlighting its definitions, dimensions, application areas, characteristics and challenges and opportunities. Considering these topics, the aim of this work was to create a systematic approach and a clear view about urban resilience for building and strengthening cities against new disturbances. It was concluded that urban resilience is based on four basic pillars: resisting, recovering, adapting and transforming. Urban resilience can also be divided in five dimensions: natural, economic, social, physical and institutional. Additionally, urban resilience evaluation models integrate eleven characteristics: redundancy, robustness, connectivity, independence, efficiency, resources, diversity, adaptation, innovation, inclusion and integration. Finally, it was concluded that there are a lack of tools and methods to evaluate resilience providing a main challenge and opportunity for developing future holistic studies about urban resilience, allowing the identification of the most effective measures to increase resilience of different urban systems.