Resilience and sustainability: The Stimulus-Recovery-Adaptation Model for adaptation of Anthropogenic Social-Ecological-Technological Systems to external disasters

In response to escalating uncertainties and risks threatening global human habitats, this study emphasizes the critical necessity for resilient and sustainable urban development. Current resilience frameworks, which mainly focus on pre-disaster assessment of city snapshots, lack conceptual integration and fail to depict the dynamics. This gap, compounded by interdisciplinary conceptual ambiguities, fuels "indicator fatigue," obstructing evidence-based policymaking. We propose and highlight the foundational differences of Anthropogenic Social-Ecological-Technological (ASET) systems regarding their self-adaptive nature and the distinctions between functions and services. We then introduce and develop the Stimulus-Recovery-Adaptation model, aiming to harmonize concepts and systematically capture urban dynamics under different scenarios with empirical evidence. The service-based index was forwarded to effectively gauge and fortify urban resilience capacities, thereby facilitating the practical implementation of the model. This approach advances the resilience scholarship and policy formulation, addressing both theoretical and practical challenges in resilience and sustainability research. © 2025 Elsevier B.V.