BS 67000:2019 City resilience. Guide

A synthesis of expert knowledge designed to help cities become more resilient to shocks and stresses

What is BS 67000?

This British Standard provides practical guidance and tools for increasing the resilience of cities. It builds on a growing body of guidance on this evolving subject and draws on global best practice as well as the expert knowledge and experience of 200 senior city stakeholders. It defines key concepts and terms, and set out a general framework to assist in the development of local resilience strategies and plans. These will:

a) Engage and motivate city, community and business leaders to address resilience and provide the necessary conditions for success

b) Improve situational awareness over the short, medium and long term, and internal resilience

c) Support and build deeper, broader and more integrated capacity in the city

d) Prioritize and strengthen capital investment decisions

e) Recognize and prepare for changing demographic, technological, physical and economic needs

BS 67000 is intended for use by all stakeholders who contribute to city resilience, whether from the private, public, or third sector as applied across communities, governance, the environment and infrastructure.

Why has the standard been written?

Resilience isn’t a new concept, but the need for it has become pressing. At the macro-level, the world’s entering what has been termed a VUCA (Volatile, Uncertain, Complex and Ambiguous) future (Gerras, 2010), with a “perfect storm” of stress factors piling up, such as climate change, resource scarcity, wealth inequality, an ageing population, housing shortages, and congestion, to name but a few.

Meanwhile at the micro-level, resilience has become a more prominent policy objective, but people who’re given the role of resilience lead are having to go away and make it up due to a lack of agreement and standardization on what resilience is and how it should be done.

This standard was written to supply authoritative guidance on building resilience with which cities can tackle future challenges and exploit opportunities.

How will cities benefit?

The standard aims to move cities away from a reactive, response-focused strategy, and ultimately towards a foresight model where resilience is seen as a means of exploiting opportunities and anticipating future changes which allow sustained economic competitiveness. Cities with robust resilience can expect to experience: