Developing a Conceptual Model for Household Digital Vulnerability and Urban Resilience

Society’s increasing dependence on digital and electronic services generates new types of risks that are fully manifested, especially in conditions of their unexpected or long-term failure. Outages of electricity, internet connectivity, mobile networks or digital payment systems can fundamentally disrupt the daily functioning of households and communities while revealing their true level of preparedness and resilience to crisis situations. The presented paper focuses on the issue of assessing the vulnerability of the population in the context of these crisis situations, while reflecting on the issue of sustainability of the normal functioning of society in conditions of limited access to the services in question. The main objective of the paper is to propose a conceptual model for the systematic assessment of population vulnerability which will allow identifying weaknesses in the daily functioning of individuals and households during outages of monitored services. The proposed model is based on a multidisciplinary approach that integrates technical, social and behavioural dimensions of preparedness. The model takes into account key determinants of vulnerability, in particular the availability of alternative sources of information, the level of digital literacy, the material welfare of households, the intensity and quality of social ties, the adaptive capacity to disrupted conditions and the long-term sustainability of providing basic necessities of life. The contribution includes defining a set of vulnerability indicators and proposing a framework for their assessment at the individual, household and community levels. The output is a conceptual model that allows not only to quantify the level of vulnerability of various population groups but also to support the design of targeted intervention measures aimed at strengthening resilience and ensuring sustainable functioning of the population. The proposed approach has application potential in the field of crisis management, civil protection and strategic planning at both the local and national levels.