Global warming and extreme weathers pose challenges to city operations. Disaster prevention and mitigation have become a key issue of urban resilience, where technologies can play a crucial part.

The recent Central Urban Work Conference held in Beijing emphasized that measures should be taken to enhance urban safety and resilience. Cities should enhance their capacity for natural disaster prevention through integrated flood control systems and waterlogging management.

Resilient cities mean metros that can respond to and resolve outer strikes and disasters, with their major characteristics and functions not obviously affected, and revive quickly afterwards, according to Liu Kai, dean and professor of the School of National Safety and Emergency Management, Beijing Normal University.

Chai Fuxin, professor and senior engineer at the Research Center on Flood and Drought Prevention and Reduction of the Ministry of Water Resources, said smart cities provide powerful technological support for strengthening urban resilience.

The integration of emerging technologies such as big data, Internet of Things (IoT) and AI in building smart cities can improve urban resilience in disaster monitoring, risk evaluation, smart decision making, planning for resilience enhancement and coordinated government management, according to Wang Naiyu, director and researcher of the REN Center For Urban Resilience at Zhejiang University.

From the perspective of flood control and waterlogging management, IoT can be used to monitor rainfall, pipe network operation and rivers in real time. Big data analysis can then step in to realize waterlogging risk warning and emergency scheduling to effectively reinforce a city's capability to deal with extreme weathers like rainstorms, Chai said.

Based on rain forecast and historical rain data, AI analysis can be adopted to conduct traffic flow forecasting and evacuation route optimization, helping cities maintain basic traffic capacity in emergencies.

In terms of urban energy system, the combination of smart power grid and distributed energy can partly maintain energy supply when the main grid is damaged, thus increasing the system's stability and impact resistance capability.

Advanced technologies can also play a part in resilience enhancement planning. Big data and AI can be employed to generate smart algorithms that support the full life-cycle management of cities. Wang said smart designs can enhance the disaster resistant capability of buildings and infrastructure before disasters come.

After disasters, AI can help analyze the recovery priority for damaged areas and optimize resource allocation to ensure orderly reconstruction with higher speed and quality.

The deep integration of urban information models and digital twin technology will become a key engine for improving urban resilience, Chai said. By real-time simulation and disaster evolution deduction, this technological combination can assist decision making and resource dispatch, effectively supporting the overall arrangement of resilient facilities, quick response and precise measure implementation under extreme events.

The interdisciplinary innovation and integrated application of these technologies will reshape urban risk prevention and control systems, forming a new closed-loop model of "full-domain sensing, smart forecasting, precise decision making and efficient execution," Wang said.

She added that this would drive cities to change from negative defense to active adaption, from partial governance to systematic enhancement of resilience, and realize safe, low-carbon and livable sustainable development goals.