Assessment of full-cycle defense resilience against geological hazards in Wuxi County, Chongqing Municipality, China

Under the impacts of global climate change and increasingly frequent extreme weather events, Wuxi County, Chongqing Municipality, is facing growing complexity and uncertainty in geological hazard risks. Meanwhile, terrain-constrained urban–rural development has intensified the vulnerability of exposed elements, exacerbating conflicts between disaster prevention and territorial spatial development. A full-cycle geological hazard defense resilience assessment framework was established to evaluate the spatial distribution characteristics of pre-disaster prevention resilience, in-disaster response resilience, post-disaster recovery resilience, and overall defense resilience at the township level in Wuxi County. Based on the assessment results, optimization strategies for territorial spatial layout were proposed. The results indicate that: (1) Spatially, the overall defense resilience exhibits a “higher in the south and lower in the north” pattern, with Baiyang Subdistrict showing the highest resilience value (0.927) and Lanying Township the lowest (0.177); (2) Pre-disaster defense resilience demonstrates a “higher in the west and lower in the east” pattern, primarily dominated by natural background conditions; (3) In-disaster emergency accessibility shows a concentric attenuation pattern, largely influenced by the spatial distribution of public service facilities; (4) Post-disaster recovery capacity is highly correlated with local socioeconomic development levels. From a full-cycle perspective integrating disaster prevention, mitigation, and relief, it is recommended that ecological restoration and slope reinforcement be prioritized in low-resilience areas in the eastern and northern regions to enhance pre-disaster stability; emergency facilities and transportation networks in peripheral townships, particularly in the western region, should be improved to shorten in-disaster response time; and targeted policy support and county-level resource coordination should be strengthened to enhance post-disaster recovery and development capacity in economically disadvantaged townships such as Lanying. These measures will systematically improve the comprehensive geological hazard defense capacity of Wuxi County.