Misfortunes never come singly. A holistic approach to urban resilience and sustainability challenges.

Making cities inclusive, safe, resilient and sustainable is one of the main global commitments for urban development, on which the Covid-19 pandemic adds both pressure and windows of opportunity. Despite an emerging scholarship, ambiguities exist with regard to the similarities, differences and trade-offs between urban resilience, sustainability, inclusiveness and other related concepts. Our empirical research aims to broaden understanding of urban resilience - sustainability nexus and its connection with urban safety and inclusiveness. To this end, we explore the variation in the perception of urban challenges and the interplay between the hazards, shocks and stresses identified and encoded by the cities participating in the 100 Resilient Cities (100 RC) Programme. The results of a multiple correspondence analysis show that hazards and acute shocks cluster together and differentiate from chronic stresses. This allowed us to discriminate between two dimensions: urban resilience and urban sustainability; at their intersection we found different "latent" challenges that score relatively high on both dimensions and represent what we call the urban safety and inclusiveness dimension. A fertile seedbed has been created for adding to the existing literature a new representation of the relationship between urban resilience and sustainability, with forays into safety and inclusiveness as well.

Testing polymineral post-IR IRSL and quartz SAR-OSL protocols on Middle to Late Pleistocene loess at Batajnica, Serbia.

The loess-palaeosol sequence of Batajnica (Vojvodina region, Serbia) is considered as one of the most complete and thickest terrestrial palaeoclimate archives for the Middle and Late Pleistocene. In order to achieve a numerical chronology for this profile, four sets of ages were obtained on 18 individual samples. Equivalent doses were determined using the SAR protocol on fine (4-11 µm) and coarse (63-90 µm) quartz fractions, as well as on polymineral fine grains by using two elevated temperature infrared stimulation methods, pIRIR 290 and pIRIR 225. We show that the upper age limit of coarse quartz OSL and polymineral pIRIR 290 and pIRIR 225 techniques is restricted to the Last Glacial/Interglacial cycle due to the field saturation of the natural signals. Luminescence ages on coarse quartz, pIRIR 225 and pIRIR 290 polymineral fine grains are in general agreement. Fine quartz ages are systematically lower than the coarse quartz and pIRIR ages, the degree of underestimation increasing with age. Comparison between natural and laboratory dose response curves indicate the age range over which each protocol provides reliable ages. For fine and coarse quartz, the natural and laboratory dose response curves overlap up to ~150 and ~250 Gy, respectively, suggesting that the SAR protocol provides reliable ages up to c. 50 ka on fine quartz and c. 100 ka on coarse quartz. Using the pIRIR 225 and pIRIR 290 protocols, equivalent doses up to ~400 Gy can be determined, beyond which in the case of the former the natural dose response curve slightly overestimates the laboratory dose response curve. Our results suggest that the choice of the mineral and luminescence technique to be used for dating loess sediments should take into consideration the reported limited reliability.