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Arid Land Geography ›› 2026, Vol. 49 ›› Issue (2): 416-427.doi: 10.12118/j.issn.1000-6060.2025.166

• Regional Development • Previous Articles    

Resilience assessment of historic districts affected by natural disturbances: A case of Kashi Old City in Xinjiang

YAN Jiaxing1(), WU Wenli1,2(), ZHANG Xutong1, SHENG Xinyan1   

  1. 1. Faculty of Agriculture, Shihezi University, Shihezi 832000, Xinjiang, China
    2. Faculty of Architecture and Urban Planning, Chongqing University, Chongqing 400030, China
  • Received:2025-03-31 Revised:2025-05-16 Online:2026-02-25 Published:2026-02-27
  • Contact: WU Wenli E-mail:yanjiaxing_shzu@163.com;wuwenlishzu@163.com

Abstract:

In the overall national security concept in the new era, historical blocks are facing dual challenges of disturbances and resilience building. Taking the historical block of Kashi Old City as the research object, this studybuilds a pressure-state-response model comprising six elements: Extreme disaster pressure, climate environment pressure, alley composition capacity, alley component density, infrastructure response, and public service response. It selects 44 key factors closely related to resilience to natural disturbances and uses the entropy weight method and the analytic hierarchy process to establish a multidimensional resilience evaluation system for historical blocks. The evaluation results show that (1) The comprehensive resilience index of the historical block of Kashi Old City is 1.84 (Level II), and the overall coping ability is weak. The resilience of the state layer (38.83%) is significantly higher than that of the response layer (27.45%), indicating its strong self-regulating ability but weak postdisaster management. (2) The key restrictive factors are the flood inundation radius, historical street and alley greening rate, and average summer solar radiation intensity, highlighting the synergistic risks between high-density built environments and climate sensitivity. (3) The wisdom of traditional construction is not linked to modern disaster prevention needs, leading to a contradiction between protection and safety. The results reveal a quantitative framework for integrated multi-hazard defense and living conservation of historic districts in arid zones, thereby promoting the synergistic development of cultural heritage conservation and ecological security.

Key words: historic districts, natural disturbance, resilience assessment, Kashi Old City