Sun et al. (2026) Urban climate resilience varies across space and time under climate hazard pressure in the Yangtze river delta urban agglomeration

Identification

• Journal: Scientific Reports
• Year: 2026
• Date: 2026-09-16
• Authors: Haochen Sun, Haohan Li, Xuan Liu
• DOI: 10.1038/s41598-026-70366-z

Research Groups

• Department of Urban Planning, Tongji University
• School of Environmental Science and Engineering, Shanghai Jiao Tong University
• Institute of Atmospheric Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences

Short Summary

This study develops a multidimensional framework to evaluate urban climate resilience in the Yangtze River Delta urban agglomeration from 2000 to 2022. The results show that gains in adaptive capacity did not fully offset the growth in climate and socioeconomic pressures, leading to a decline in overall resilience.

Objective

• Investigate the spatiotemporal evolution of urban climate resilience in the Yangtze River Delta urban agglomeration.
• Examine the relationships between climate hazard pressure, socioeconomic exposure, adaptive capacity, and urban resilience.

Study Configuration

• Spatial Scale: 26 cities in the Yangtze River Delta urban agglomeration.
• Temporal Scale: 2000-2022.

Methodology and Data

• Models used: xRFM (Recursive Feature Machine) with Differential Evolution optimization, SHAP (SHapley Additive exPlanations), GAM (Generalized Additive Model), and PDPs (Partial Dependence Plots).
• Data sources: Official statistical data from China City Statistical Yearbook, China Industrial Statistical Yearbook, and China Statistical Yearbook on Environment.

Main Results

• The regional mean Hazard increased by 86.51% and Exposure by 92.24%, while Capacity improved by 83.44%.
• Despite the increase in adaptive capacity, overall resilience declined by 7.64%.
• High-Hazard and high-Exposure areas were concentrated mainly in the more urbanized eastern and coastal parts of the YRD.
• The combined pattern indicates that gains in adaptive capacity did not fully offset the simultaneous growth of climate-hazard and socioeconomic-exposure pressures.

Contributions

• This study provides a comprehensive framework for evaluating urban climate resilience, incorporating multidimensional indicators and machine learning-based interpretation.
• The results highlight the need to coordinate climate-risk reduction with sustained improvements in adaptive capacity across highly urbanized regions.

Funding

• National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant No. 51979220)
• Shanghai Municipal Science and Technology Commission (Grant No. 19DZ1200700)

Citation

@article{Sun2026Urban,
  author = {Sun, Haochen and Li, Haohan and Liu, Xuan},
  title = {Urban climate resilience varies across space and time under climate hazard pressure in the Yangtze river delta urban agglomeration},
  journal = {Scientific Reports},
  year = {2026},
  doi = {10.1038/s41598-026-70366-z},
  url = {https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-026-70366-z}
}