PARTICIPATION IN MULTI-HAZARD | MULTI-RISK URBAN RESILIENCE PLANNING: A DECISION SUPPORT FRAMEWORK

Public participation is conceived as the normative, communicative, and collaborative process in which Quintuple Helix actors engage through shared power and a facilitating context, navigating a continuum of formal and informal, top-down and bottom-up participatory activities within planning and policy-making. Despite growing scholarly attention over the past two decades, significant gaps remain in understanding how, where, and when public participation can be effectively employed in multi-hazard | multi-risk urban resilience planning. Guided by the primary research question – Which critical methodological factors support the effectiveness of public participation throughout the life cycle of multi-hazard | multi-risk urban resilience planning processes led by local public administrations? – the study develops a comprehensive, transdisciplinary methodological approach integrating desk-based research and empirical fieldwork. An initial umbrella review of scientific literature critically synthesizes research gaps in public participation in urban resilience planning to informing the formulation of two sub-questions: How do barriers and coping strategies emerge and operate within public participation processes in multi-hazard | multi-risk urban resilience planning at the local level? Which criteria and indicators can best support the ex-ante planning, in-progress monitoring, and ex post evaluation of public participation in multi-hazard | multi-risk urban resilience planning processes at the local level? To address these questions, the study combines a qualitative systematic review of peer-reviewed literature with a targeted, non-systematic review of grey literature. Their integrated findings serve two purposes: 1. systematizing accumulated knowledge to develop a prototype, literature-based set of guidelines reflecting the current state of the art; 2. compiling and hierarchizing a preliminary pool of criteria and indicators to support support participatory process design, monitoring, and evaluation. Subsequently, 1. the prototype guidelines are tested and refined through field analysis of four real-world case studies | participatory processes using an ad hoc assessment checklist | form. This empirical validation identifies strengths, gaps, and areas for improvement, leading to the development of an Evidence-Based Strategic Roadmap. 2. in parallel, the preliminary pool of criteria and indicators is systematically screened and reduced to a final shortlist. Each indicator is then weighted and validated through a participatory MCDM-based process using the Best Worst Method, involving 20 experts in spatial planning, disaster risk management, geography, and urban sociology. This process results in the development of an innovative weighted indicator-based tool designed for ex-ante planning, in-progress monitoring, and ex-post evaluation of participatory processes. The ultimate output of this comprehensive, transdisciplinary approach is the design of a Decision-Support Framework to guide local-level public participation in multi-hazard | multi-risk urban resilience planning, integrating the Strategic Roadmap and the weighted indicator-based tool. The study further demonstrates the Framework’s mainstreaming potential within European and Italian governance contexts, as well as its applicability within European research and innovation funding programmes, including Horizon Europe. The manuscript concludes by discussing methodological limitations and outlining directions for future research.