Unlocking city resilience through behavioural systems mapping

The capacity of our communities, institutions, and systems to survive, adapt, and thrive amidst chronic stresses and acute shocks defines urban resilience. As we close in on the final months of 2026, it is undeniably clear that our neighbourhoods globally are in line for continued disruptions.

This year, neighbourhoods across the UK and many global municipalities experienced severe heat stress, drought, and cascading public health crises. Yet, climate change is just one of many compounding factors stressing our urban centres. To navigate this reality, city policymakers need new approaches that help local systems prepare, respond, and recover. One highly promising, practical method is Behavioural Systems Mapping (BSM).

The Translation Gap in Resilience Policy

Leading models, such as the City Resilience Framework from Arup and the Resilient Cities Network, effectively structure the resilience challenge across four key dimensions: Health & Wellbeing, Economy & Society, Infrastructure & Environment, and Local Governance & Planning.

However, translating these high-level, city-wide policy goals into tangible neighbourhood-level change requires a translating function.

This is where Behavioural Systems Mapping proves invaluable. By mapping networks at the neighbourhood level—engaging local charity groups, resident networks, schools, and healthcare providers—policymakers can understand the daily actions that either build a community's resilience or erode its ability to withstand shocks. Knowing the exact direction and nature of these impacts allows local governments to target interventions precisely.

From Mapping Drivers to Designing Interventions

Research consistently highlights that resilience isn’t a standalone product that a local authority can simply procure. It is an emergent outcome manifested in a system's culture, infrastructure quality, and governance. At the neighbourhood level, resilience relies heavily on whether social and economic systems genuinely help people live healthy lives, and whether infrastructure delivers reliable, sustainable services.

When policymakers undertake participatory Behavioural Systems Mapping, all participants—from city officials to residents—actively map local actors, behaviours, connections, and drivers. This shifts the focus away from "fixing" individual citizens toward examining how the neighbourhood system itself (and the institutional actors shaping it) produces barriers. It also creates a shared vision of what is possible through genuine collaboration.

We've been mapping neighbourhood behaviours in 5 UK cities and neighbourhoods for the UK Government's Digital Inclusion Innovation Fund, and from it we've been able to draw out insights that challenge our assumptions about what create systems that are inclusive and resilient.

What Behaviours Reveal About System Resilience

Mapping neighbourhood behaviours helps unpick the realities of local resilience across three core areas relevant to any municipality:

• Making resilience inclusive: Meaningful participation is central to building urban resilience. BSM draws out local knowledge and lived experience. The reality for policymakers is that professional, proxy expertise cannot substitute for the ground-level realities of how people interact with and experience their community.
• Creating better, shock-proof services: Ineffective waste management, poorly maintained infrastructure, or flawed digital services restrict access and deteriorate the resident experience. For example, recent mapping of digital exclusion in UK neighbourhoods highlighted that confusing digital channels put vital health services out of reach for older populations. During severe heatwaves, this lack of accessible digital communication becomes a life-threatening barrier. Low service quality fundamentally degrades a neighbourhood's capacity to survive major shocks.
• Dismantling institutional silos: Neighbourhoods are interconnected ecosystems. Within any local authority, multiple teams—from public health to climate adaptation—often attempt to tackle overlapping crises in isolation. Silos might create a false sense of control and make complexity feel "simple," but they actively hinder resilience. Because every dimension of a city is affected by and must support every other dimension, mapping behaviours forces us to view the neighbourhood holistically, beyond restrictive departmental boundaries.

Describing Resilience as a System Action

Ultimately, mapping behaviours helps us see neighbourhoods not as administrative zones, but as living networks of human action—where organisations and groups generate both positive and negative impacts.

Opening up a transparent conversation about the everyday actions of the local council, housing associations, and community groups transforms resilience from an academic concept trapped in policy documents into a set of observable, practical actions. This enables us to incrementally build places that are more liveable, healthy, and environmentally secure.

How might mapping the daily behaviours of your service users reveal hidden barriers to resilience in your current city projects?

Find out more about our research in 5 UK cities here (opens in a new tab).