Page 11 - Smart public health emergency management and ICT implementations - A U4SSC deliverable on city platforms

1 Introduction

Resilience is a broadly used term that expresses a process and not a feature with meanings that vary
according to the applied domain. According to the Oxford Learner’s Dictionary, it expresses the
ability of people or things to feel better quickly after something unpleasant, such as shock, injury, etc.
or the ability of a substance to return to its original shape after it has been bent, stretched or pressed .
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In the same vein, according to United Nations Office for Disaster Risk Reduction , resilience represents
the ability of a system, community or society exposed to hazards to resist, absorb, accommodate,
adapt, transform and recover from the effects of a hazard in a timely and efficient manner, including the
preservation and restoration of its essential basic structures and functions through risk management.
Organizational and psychological resilience express the ability of an organization to become
resilient, while city resilience represents the ability of a city to keep on operating in ways that can
ensure that its community (and especially its most vulnerable members) can survive and prosper
regardless of the crisis (economic, health, environmental etc.) that it experiences 2,3,4 .

Despite cities being at the core of Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 11 for a sustainable and
resilient future, the emphasis is on resilience, as is the case in SDG 1 (ending poverty), where it is
expected to be achieved by building resilience for the poor and the most vulnerable members of
the community against extreme events (economic, social, environmental and disasters) . Closely
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linked to this goal is SDG 3, which is concerned with the promotion of good health and well-being
for all ages, including providing health coverage and tackling health emergencies.

The current pandemic has exposed the global risks and threats posed by unpreparedness, thus
lending urgency for the need to build a robust system for early warning, risk reduction and health
management. It is believed that “worst” epidemics (single outbreaks) are most likely to occur
in populations where individuals randomly mix (proportionate mixing) in cities . In this context,
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populations living in megacities appear to be the most vulnerable, as was also confirmed during
the Covid-19 crisis, where the virus spread exponentially 4,7,8,9,10 .

While epidemics have occurred frequently through centuries of recorded history, in the last two
decades they appear to be occurring annually with some being more deadly than others. They
impact communities , cause national laws to be rewritten, initiate a restructuring of public health
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infrastructure, and encourage the application of modified methods of combating disease in the
areas of surveillance and military-style lockdowns. Infectious diseases continue to be a threat to
humans, regardless of age, gender, lifestyle, ethnic background and socio-economic status .
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Despite improvements in urban conditions, including water quality and sanitary conditions as
well as battling infectious microorganisms coupled with progress in developing new vaccines and
antibiotics, the incidence of infectious diseases continues to be on the rise. The economic impacts
and the risk to health of large-spread epidemics and pandemics are significant. Such impacts

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a https:// www .preventionweb .net/ disaster -risk/ concepts/ resilience/ .

U4SSC: Smart public health emergency management and ICT implementations 1