Madina’s MENARA platform and a neighborhood resilience index aim to reduce investment uncertainty

Dr. Essem Hawlawani, director of the decision support center at the Al Madina Region Development Authority, described a data-driven approach Madina uses to measure and manage urban resilience.

On CGTN’s SDG Media Zone, Hawlawani said Madina built a MENARA Urban Platform to synthesize urban indicators, project metadata and other city data and to link those data to the Sustainable Development Goals. He said the platform has supported production of two Voluntary Local Reviews (VLRs) and a Madina resilience report, and it was used to develop a “Medina City Resilience Index” to quantify resilience at the neighborhood level.

Hawlawani said the city uses four lenses—human, infrastructure, environment and policy—to evaluate resilience and to design interventions that are localized and balanced. “We can quantify and measure Medina City’s resilience at a neighborhood level,” he said, adding that neighborhood scoring helps avoid a ‘‘one size fits all’’ approach to strategy.

He argued that such data systems reduce the ‘‘black box’’ investors face: if investors and banks can see where to invest and what technology addresses which resilience issues, it becomes easier to target funding and accelerate implementation. Hawlawani said Madina’s population is about 1,500,000 and is growing; a growth rate figure mentioned in the transcript was unclear.

Hawlawani also described a Madina resilience report as “first of its kind in Saudi Arabia and the Middle East,” and he said the city has targeted both local interventions and efforts to mentor other cities through its resilience work.

The account emphasized the value of localized, evidence-based planning and reinforced the earlier point in the interview that rigorous, city-specific metrics can help attract investment and guide policymaking.