Difference between revisions of "Resilience"

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[[Category:Safety]]
=Resilience=
 
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[[File:ae.png|25px|right|This is a page providing background in a specific field of expertise]]'''Resilience''' is the degree to which the functioning of a system is unperturbed by incidents, either by resisting damage and/or recovering quickly.
   
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==Description==
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The concept of resilience applies to all systems of society (or aspects that can be viewed as a system), if its functioning can be evaluated. As such, the term gained an important role in the field of protection of [[Critical infrastructure]].
   
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Resilience is related to the concept of [[Vulnerability]], in the sense that lowering vulnerability will most likely increase resilience and to the [[Crisis management cycle]] that, through a process of constant improvement, aims to increase resilience.
==Introduction==
 
Urban planning, as one of the most effective mitigation instruments, should and can essentially contribute to increasing community resilience ( of cities, towns, municipalities, districts or neighbourhood communities). In the context of societal security, resilience typically refers to a community as a whole.
 
In security research, resilience is an evolving concept, and most often used as a descriptor for a state of the system. However, various authors agree on resilience not being an equilibrium state but being a dynamic property or process, changing and being variable over time (e.g. Lorenz 2010<ref>Lynch, K. (1960): The Image of the City. MIT Press: Cambridge, MA. Matthews, R./Pitts, J. (2001): Crime, Disorder and Community Safety. A New Agenda? Routledge: London/New York.</ref>, Norris et al. 2008<ref>Norris, F. H./Stevens. S. P./Pfefferbaum, B./Wyche, K. F./Pfefferbaum, R. L. (2008): Community Resilience as a Metaphor, Theory, Set of Capacities, and Strategy for Disaster Readiness. Am J Community Psychol 41:127–150. DOI 10.1007/s10464-007-9156-6.</ref>, Cutter 2008<ref>Cutter, S.L./Barnes, L./Berry, M./Burton, C./Evans, E./Tate, E./Webb, J. (2008): Community and Regional Resilience: Perspectives from Hazards, Disasters, and Emergency Management. CARRI Research Report 1. Community & Regional Resilience Initiative. Online in Internet: URL: http://www.resilientus.org/library/FINAL_CUTTER_9-25-08_1223482309.pdf [last access: 2012-02-14].</ref>).
 
   
 
===Societal resilience===
 
'''Societal resilience''' concerns the well-being (health, morale, etc.), self-protection (asset pattern, income, qualifications, etc.), and social protection (hazard preparedness by society, building codes, shelters, etc.) of the general public. The term also includes the resilience of social and political networks and institutions (social capital, institutional environment, etc.).<ref>Cannon T. et al.: Social Vulnerability, Sustainable Livelihoods and Disasters. Report to DFID. Conflict and Humanitarian Assistance Department (CHAD) and Sustainable Livelihoods Office London, 2003, pp. 4-5.</ref>
   
==Urban resilience and disaster mitigation==
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==Resilience and urban planning==
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Incorporating both safety and security consideration in the process of urban planning can contribute substantially to the resilience of an urban environment, by reducing potential vulnerabilities and impacts and supporting effective crisis management.
In urban studies, the concept of resilience has recently been linked back to its ecological origins and applied as a concept within the context of environmental psychology. This concept has been placed in a socio-political context to arrive at a notion of resilience that focuses on macro-resilience of an urban society as a whole (cf. Coaffee/Wood/Rogers 2009: 110-122<ref>Coaffee, J/Wood, D.M./Rogers, P. (2009): The Everyday Resilience of the City. How Cities Respond to Terrorism and Disaster. Houndmills, Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. </ref>).
 
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Planning can contribute to building a system (of both social and of built environment) “''to either absorb or respond to negative external influences or to more generalized experiences of perturbation.''” (Coaffee/Wood/Rogers 2009: 122)<ref name ="Coaffee/Wood/Rogers 2009">Coaffee, J/Wood, D.M./Rogers, P. (2009): The Everyday Resilience of the City. How Cities Respond to Terrorism and Disaster. Houndmills, Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan: p. 122</ref>
   
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Concrete approaches that can be taken by urban planners to increase resilience, include:
Enhancing resilience of a community is becoming an acknowledged concept and mechanism for mitigating disaster impacts on urban or local level. The [http://www.whitehouse.gov/administration/eop/nsc National Security Council in the White House], for example, established the Office of Resilience to equip the community policy with guiding principles for the nation’s safety (cf. Cutter et al. 2010<ref>Cutter, S. L./Burton, C.L./Emrich, C.T. (2010): Disaster Resilience Indicators for Benchmarking Baseline Conditions. Journal of Homeland Security and Emergency Management Vol. 7, No. 1, Article 51: 1-22. DOI: 10.2202/1547-7355.1732.</ref>). By adopting resilience as a clear and pragmatic policy goal, aiming to invest in fostering community resilience, communities are supposed to achieve an improved position to withstand disruptions and to recover and re-establish more easily.
 
 
* Applying a [[comprehensive approach]] to urban planning can help increase societal resilience, because it acknowledges that an urban system can be confronted with all the phases of the [[crisis management cycle]] simultaneously.
 
* Following the disaster reduction and mitigation principles of resilience building.<ref name ="Sapirstein 2009">Sapirstein, G. (2009): Social Resilience: The Forgotten Element in Disaster Reduction. Boston: Organizational Resilience International. Retrieved from http://www.oriconsulting.com/social_resilience.pdf [last access: 2012-05-11].)</ref>
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* Being sensitive to the social context and to [[security culture|security cultures]].
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* Basing the design and use of tools on citizens’ [[Perception of (in)security and risks|perception of (in)security and risks]], feeling of vulnerability and acceptance of technological solutions for security problems.
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* Identifying potential vulnerabilities (of which the Securban tool can be used to identify security issues).
 
* Using a holistic approach by incorporating the following five interconnected functional components: social, economic, political, demographic, and environmental.<ref>Pelling M.: The Vulnerability of Cities: Natural Disasters and Social Resilience. London: Sterling, VA: Earthscan, 2003, p. 12.</ref>
   
 
{{references}}
 
 
<ref>Glossary of the Department of Sustainable Development: http://www.oas.org/dsd/Nat-Dis-Proj/Natdesproject/Glossary.htm.</ref>
 
 
==Resilience and vulnerability==
 
 
Improving general '''resilience''' levels also requires tackling and understanding [[vulnerability]]. While vulnerability in general is the susceptibility of a community to the impact of hazards, it should in particular “''involve a predictive quality: it is supposedly a way of conceptualizing what may happen to an identifiable population under conditions of particular risk and hazards''.”; “''Social vulnerability is the complex set of characteristics that include a person’s: initial well-being (health, morale, etc.); self-protection (asset pattern, income, qualifications, etc.); social protection (hazard preparedness by society, building codes, shelters, etc.); social and political networks and institutions (social capital, institutional environment, etc.).''”<ref> T. Cannon et al.: Social Vulnerability, Sustainable Livelihoods and Disasters. Report to DFID. Conflict and Humanitarian Assistance Department (CHAD) and Sustainable Livelihoods Office London, 2003, pp. 4-5.</ref>
 
 
By identifying potential [[vulnerability|vulnerabilities]], [[urban planning]] can directly contribute to the strengthening of community resilience.
 
 
 
==Societal resilience==
 
 
===Definition===
 
'''Societal resilience''' is understood to be the ability of people, societies and socio-ecological systems to positively adapt to change, risks, threats and harms. Disaster reduction and mitigation measures the time it takes for a community or society to recover from a natural or man-made hazard<ref>Sapirstein G. (2009): Social Resilience: The Forgotten Element in Disaster Reduction. Organizational Resilience International: Boston. pp: 1-9. Online http://www.oriconsulting.com/social_resilience.pdf [2012-05-11].</ref>.
 
 
The concept focuses both reactive capabilities to cope with, recover from and adjust to adversities and proactive capacities and action to prepare for and anticipate crisis, create options to response and recover from various kinds of harms and threats. These can comprise
 
 
*Governance and management of natural and environmental hazards, of climate change and energy policies;
 
*Governance and management of demographic challenges and urbanization; development of livelihood, gender and migration concepts;
 
*Governance and management of public health; development of health programs;
 
*Governance and management of economical and geopolitical risks;
 
*Governance and management of external and internal threats.
 
 
 
===Societal resilience, urban planning and the comprehensive approach===
 
 
Applying a [[comprehensive approach]] to [[urban planning]] can help increase societal resilience, because it acknowledges that an urban system can be confronted with all the phases of the [[crisis management cycle]] simultaneously. Hence, the disaster reduction and mitigation principles of resilience building should be followed<ref>Sapirstein G. (2009): Social Resilience: The Forgotten Element in Disaster Reduction. Organizational Resilience International: Boston. pp: 1-9. Online http://www.oriconsulting.com/social_resilience.pdf [2012-05-11].</ref>.
 
 
Essentially, resilience thinking in the urban planning process should be grounded on a holistic view by incorporating the following five interconnected functional components: social, economic, political, demographic, and environmental.<ref>M. Pelling: The Vulnerability of Cities: Natural Disasters and Social Resilience. London: Sterling, VA: Earthscan, 2003, p. 12.</ref>
 
 
It follows that planning tools aiming at increasing urban resilience should be sensitive to the social context to which they are applied. Their development and use should be based on an analysis of relevant public security cultures on both the level of government and the level of citizens. In particular, the design and use of tools should be based on citizens’ perception of insecurity, feeling of vulnerability and acceptance of technological solutions for security problems.
 
 
 
===Resilience and societal security===
 
 
Approaches such as “[[New urbanism|New Urbanism]]” have been led by the assumption that societal resilience could be increased by informed, progressive architectural design that per se would meliorate human behaviour and reduce insecurity as well as citizens’ feeling thereof, however this physical determinism will not hold. Threat and vulnerability perception by the 'users' of a city/an urban environment has to be taken into account. Urban planning should be sensitive to societal security cultures and in particular be based on citizens’ [[perception of (in)security|perception of insecurity]], feeling of [[vulnerability]] and acceptance of technological solutions for security problems. For example, while the need to provide for sufficient lighting clearly shapes the planning process of urban public space, thorough analysis of the relevant users and user groups are required to better assess how lighting can contribute to heighten individual security perception and to reduce “fear” in public space.
 
 
 
==Resilience requirements==
 
 
While '''resilience''' requirements can have to do with the process of urban design itself, they also and inevitably comprise psychological and social aspects. The model of reflective fear for example holds that a person’s (reflective) fear will decrease or increase, depending on the information available concerning personal risk or hazard exposure. In other words, and in case of alerts, this model can describe how reassurance of citizens could contribute to an increase in resilience, while alerts, rather, tend to increase the imbalance of factual and felt (or sensed) fear.
 
 
 
Generally, a “multicultural sensibility for planning” is necessary, that includes considering how cultures, “''which prescribe members’ relations with the community, orient their actions, and, among other things, suggest how they might use formal planning processes.''”<ref> H. S. Baum: Culture Matters–But It Shouldn’t Matter Too Much. In: M. A. Burayidi (ed.): Urban Planning in a Multicultural Society, Westport, CT: Greenwood, 2000, p. 115.</ref>
 
 
 
==References==
 
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Latest revision as of 16:06, 15 August 2013

This is a page providing background in a specific field of expertise

Resilience is the degree to which the functioning of a system is unperturbed by incidents, either by resisting damage and/or recovering quickly.

Description

The concept of resilience applies to all systems of society (or aspects that can be viewed as a system), if its functioning can be evaluated. As such, the term gained an important role in the field of protection of Critical infrastructure.

Resilience is related to the concept of Vulnerability, in the sense that lowering vulnerability will most likely increase resilience and to the Crisis management cycle that, through a process of constant improvement, aims to increase resilience.

Societal resilience

Societal resilience concerns the well-being (health, morale, etc.), self-protection (asset pattern, income, qualifications, etc.), and social protection (hazard preparedness by society, building codes, shelters, etc.) of the general public. The term also includes the resilience of social and political networks and institutions (social capital, institutional environment, etc.).[1]

Resilience and urban planning

Incorporating both safety and security consideration in the process of urban planning can contribute substantially to the resilience of an urban environment, by reducing potential vulnerabilities and impacts and supporting effective crisis management. Planning can contribute to building a system (of both social and of built environment) “to either absorb or respond to negative external influences or to more generalized experiences of perturbation.” (Coaffee/Wood/Rogers 2009: 122)[2]

Concrete approaches that can be taken by urban planners to increase resilience, include:

  • Applying a comprehensive approach to urban planning can help increase societal resilience, because it acknowledges that an urban system can be confronted with all the phases of the crisis management cycle simultaneously.
  • Following the disaster reduction and mitigation principles of resilience building.[3]
  • Being sensitive to the social context and to security cultures.
  • Basing the design and use of tools on citizens’ perception of (in)security and risks, feeling of vulnerability and acceptance of technological solutions for security problems.
  • Identifying potential vulnerabilities (of which the Securban tool can be used to identify security issues).
  • Using a holistic approach by incorporating the following five interconnected functional components: social, economic, political, demographic, and environmental.[4]

Footnotes and references

  1. Cannon T. et al.: Social Vulnerability, Sustainable Livelihoods and Disasters. Report to DFID. Conflict and Humanitarian Assistance Department (CHAD) and Sustainable Livelihoods Office London, 2003, pp. 4-5.
  2. Coaffee, J/Wood, D.M./Rogers, P. (2009): The Everyday Resilience of the City. How Cities Respond to Terrorism and Disaster. Houndmills, Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan: p. 122
  3. Sapirstein, G. (2009): Social Resilience: The Forgotten Element in Disaster Reduction. Boston: Organizational Resilience International. Retrieved from http://www.oriconsulting.com/social_resilience.pdf [last access: 2012-05-11].)
  4. Pelling M.: The Vulnerability of Cities: Natural Disasters and Social Resilience. London: Sterling, VA: Earthscan, 2003, p. 12.