Diagnosing Institutional Resilience in Aging Critical Infrastructure: The VILDE Framework and AHP-Based Governance Priority Structure Under Climate Stress

This study diagnoses institutional resilience in aging critical infrastructure under climate stress by developing the VILDE framework and deriving an AHP-based governance priority structure. Although climate-induced infrastructure failures are often attributed to physical vulnerability, cascading breakdowns are fundamentally shaped by institutional governance constraints, which existing engineering-oriented resilience frameworks cannot systematically diagnose. The study operationalizes five governance dimensions—Values, Institutions, Leadership, Devotion, and Expertise (VILDE)—through the Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP), using pairwise evaluations from 20 purposively selected experts in infrastructure management, disaster governance, and public administration. Expertise (w = 0.452) and Devotion (w = 0.276) received the highest priority weights, together accounting for 72.8% of the aggregated governance weight, and sensitivity analysis indicates that this ranking remains robust under ±30% perturbation. A documentary-based application to the Zhengzhou July 2021 urban infrastructure failure yielded a Governance Capacity Index (VILDE-GCI) of 0.414, with deficiencies concentrated in technical maintenance expertise, resilience enhancement expertise, and financial commitment. Under a simplified equal-resource assumption, scenario simulations suggest that weight-guided interventions generate greater diagnostic improvement per resource unit than politically visible but lower-priority alternatives. The framework reconceptualizes resilience as institutional governance capacity and supports prioritizing governance investments under escalating climate risks.