The approach for flood resilient adaptive capacity requires a rigorous and comprehensive understanding of available practice toward mitigation and sustainability under flood risk in urban centers. We ascertain that swift restorative actions to amend the ecology damages with the incorporation of ‘resilience’ elements as available methods of environmentally sensitive, innovative practices; the capacity varies from place to place. The theoretical framework includes criteria pertaining to sustainability, resilience, and adaptive practice. The flood resilience thinking corresponds to a place specific model to sustain its resilience and helps to inform on how to best share about mitigating climate change accumulated through each flood event. Given this, the resilience capacity stems from the local adaptive learning, principal assessment framework is proposed, and their measurable process are defined, followed by an adaptive cycle assessment through panarchy approach, performed for each of the scales at the different transitional stages. This resilience varies from the degree and time exposed to flood. The focus is on their experience and resilience thinking under climate change, affecting their personal engagement with climate change. The study ascertained that in the face of climate risks, the transitional processes are based on (1) adaptive measures aided and enhanced the information gathered for risk impact assessment differ among the residents’ perception on the habitat and human domain (2) adaptive capacity assessment is an effective mean in understanding residents’ mitigation will and confidence, and (3) community ability to reflect on past actual time scenario emerges as an effective mean in understanding the capacity to mitigate flood risks within the community. Resilience practice is a place-based capacity; in times of climate change, local governments need to understand how to adapt locally and being feasible for an amelioration of our urban condition under climate risks. Most importantly, the assessment framework contributes to understand local adaptation practice and toward the sustainability of the urbanity.
