The impact of climate change on urban resilience in the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei region

The increasing uncertainty related to disaster risk under climate change brings about new challenges for sustainable urban management. The emergence of the urban resilience concept can improve the ability and extent to which cities can absorb and resolve risks, providing insight into the sustainable development of cities and regions. Yet, to date, the impact of climate change on regional urban resilience is not well understood. This paper measures the changes in urban resilience of the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei (BTH) region from 1998 to 2019, and then explores the contribution of climate influencing factors such as temperature, precipitation and wind speed to urban resilience using econometric models. Results demonstrate the following: (1) Urban resilience shows a large spatial heterogeneity in the BTH region. Overall, Beijing and Tianjin have better and more stable resilience than Hebei Province. (2) Regarding the static impact of climate change on urban resilience, a 1 unit increase in Ln temperature and Ln precipitation will respectively increase Ln resilience by 1.01 units and 0.54 units, indicating that it has a significant positive impact on urban resilience. Each 1 unit increase in Ln wind speed will decrease resilience by 1.65 units, representing a significant negative effect. (3) Regarding the dynamic impact of climate change on urban resilience, a positive 1 unit impact of climatic factors indicates that an increase in temperature will first increase and then decrease urban resilience, and an increase in precipitation and wind speed will initially support improvement in urban resilience. Based on these findings, this article offers policy recommendations to improve urban resilience.