A new model for describing the urban resilience considering adaptability, resistance and recovery

•A new model for urban resilience considering adaptability, resistance and recovery was proposed.•Valid factual information during the Morakot was adopted to validate this model.•Critical parameters of the model such as damage intensity, experience coefficient etc. were studied.•Some optimal suggestions were provided to efficiently improve urban resilience. Due to the greater emphasis on cities’ preparatory and recover ability for disaster, urban resilience is widely concerned, which is different from the traditional management mode of natural disaster and provides a new theoretical framework for urban security governance. In this paper, considering adaptability, resistance and recovery as the main characteristic factor of urban resilience, an urban resilience model was developed. This model could be used to simulate the resilience of a city under different disaster scenarios. Valid information was collected from Taiwan of China during the Morakot, and the urban resilience model was tested by the practical data, and then the resilience in Taiwan was analyzed by the constructed model. The results show that the model could reflect the resilience change of cities during disasters to some extent. Further, according to the disaster characteristics, five disaster scenarios were set to analyze various resilience characteristics. In addition, the critical parameters of the model were studied. We found that the greater intensity of disaster damage, the more serious damage of urban system function, and the earlier peak time of disaster damage intensity appears, the faster damage rate of urban system function will be. Furthermore, the larger coefficient of external disaster relief capability, the lower loss of urban system function and the better recovery capability. The higher coefficient of disaster experience, the richer the disaster response experience, the more perfect urban infrastructure of disaster response, and the smaller loss of urban system function. Based on our results, we analyze the characteristics of urban resilience and provide some optimal suggestions to efficiently improve urban resilience.