sustainability Article Assessing Resilience of Urban Critical Infrastructure Networks: A Case Study of Ahvaz, Iran Hadi Alizadeh 1 and Ayyoob Sharifi 2,3,4,* 1 Geography and Urban Planning, Shahid Chamran University of Ahvaz, Ahvaz 6135783151, Iran;
[email protected] 2 Graduate School of Humanities and Social Sciences, Hiroshima University, Higashi-Hiroshima 739-8530, Japan 3 Graduate School of Advanced Science and Engineering, Hiroshima University, Higashi-Hiroshima 739-8530, Japan 4 Network for Education and Research on Peace and Sustainability (NERPS), Hiroshima University, Higashi-Hiroshima 739-8530, Japan * Correspondence: sharifi@hiroshima-u.ac.jp; Tel.: +81-82-424-6826 Received: 16 April 2020; Accepted: 1 May 2020; Published: 2 May 2020 Abstract: Cities around the world increasingly recognize the need to build on their resilience to deal with the converging forces of urbanization and climate change. Given the significance of critical infrastructure for maintaining quality of life in cities, improving their resilience is of high importance to planners and policy makers. The main purpose of this study is to spatially analyze the resilience of water, electricity, and gas critical infrastructure networks in Ahvaz, a major Iranian city that has been hit by various disastrous events over the past few years. Towards this goal, we first conducted a two-round Delphi survey to identify criteria that can be used for determining resilience of critical infrastructure networks across different parts of the city. The selected criteria that were used for spatial analysis are related to the physical texture, the design pattern, and the scale of service provision of the critical infrastructure networks.