Toronto is celebrated for its diversity, but what about its resiliency?

As the planet heats up and weather grows ever more extreme, cities around the world are taking a second look at themselves with an eye to making sure they’re up to the task ahead.

So it was no surprise that the Global Cities Summit devoted a whole session to the subject of urban resiliency. The conference, one of the most international Toronto has hosted in some time, wrapped up Friday evening. Delegates from places as varied as Haiphong, Helsinki, Mecca, Barcelona and Bogota descended on the city this week to hear how the University of Toronto Global Cities Indicators Facility (GCIF) has ushered in a new age of urban data collection, one that will enable city-to-city comparisons for the first time.

As the number crunchers soon discovered, cities everywhere are desperately looking at ways to ensure they’re prepared for the next deluge, drought, hurricane, typhoon, ice storm, blizzard … .

Listening to speakers from Manila and Shanghai describing the unprecedented flooding they now face, one couldn’t help but think of our own brushes with the new environmental reality. In July 2013, a record downpour dropped a month’s rain in one afternoon and did enough damage to cost insurers $850 million.