Guiding factors for planning public open spaces to enhance coastal cities’ disaster resilience to tsunamis

Purpose Public open spaces (POS) in cities are often measured as a strength to enhance cities’ sustainability with a contribution to the three pillars: economic, social and environmental. Nevertheless, the importance of POS for disaster resilience is less recognised and remains under-rehearsed in the urban planning context. Within this context, this research paper aims to investigate the methods and approaches of using POS to enhance the coastal cities’ resilience to tsunamis through planning and designing interventions. Design/methodology/approach This study used the grounded theory as the research strategy. Accordingly, data collection involved 72 unstructured interviews covering a wide variety of participants related to the field of study including tsunami-affected communities, disaster resilience experts, urban planners, sociologists, and coastal planners, in the context of Sri Lanka. The grounded theory coding procedure is used to analyse the data that includes transcripts, notes, maps and documents. Findings The analysis reveals that there is a significant potential to use POS to enhance the coastal cities’ resilience to tsunamis as an emergency evacuation directing point, as a primary place for emergency rescue, as an agent for temporary sheltering, as a facilitator for tsunami disaster mitigation and as a mediator to provide tsunami awareness. Finally, the findings propose five guiding factors for planning POS to enhance coastal cities’ disaster resilience to Tsunamis. Originality/value This paper introduces an innovative and unique approach for future urban planners and design professionals, to plan and design POS with a new direction towards disaster resilience while ensuring sustainability.