Urban and social vulnerability assessment in the built environment: An interdisciplinary index-methodology towards feasible planning and policy-making under a crisis context

The current global crisis on Covid-19 has an adverse impact on urban regeneration of the built environment in emerging countries, with a recent world GDP drop of around 4.9 % and around 20–30 % decrease in economic funds intended for renovation policies, being required new decision support mechanisms to diagnose and quantify the vulnerability of existing neighbourhoods, aiming to conduct feasible and adjusted regeneration strategies. This research contributes with a novel interdisciplinary index-methodology for assessing the adequacy of housing environments with social backwardness, based on a dual weighting procedure of four main dimensions: Building, Urban, Environmental and Social (BUES), calculated through technical inspections, from technicians, together with social questionnaires, from users, with respect to 32 variables related to housing environments, urban services, and environmental issues. The operation and replicability of the system are tested in two representative neighbourhoods from Mexico and Spain, identifying most important weaknesses and needs according to each variable and displayed results, discussing a 0.7 points of deviation average from technicians and users in a 1–5 Likert scale. Conclusions incorporate important outcomes for urban policy-makers and technicians, providing methodological implications for adjusting public aids to promote effective regeneration guidelines based on a proper decision-making under an austere economic context.