Resilience

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Resilience

Introduction

In the context of societal security, resilience typically refers to a community as a whole. 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 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[1], Norris et al. 2008[2], Cutter 2008[3]).

Urban resilience and disaster mitigation

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[4]).

Enhancing resilience of a community is becoming an acknowledged concept and mechanism for mitigating disaster impacts on urban or local level. The 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[5]). 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.


Resilience definitions

The origin and developing conceptualization of resilience across various disciplines has been illustrated in numerous publications (e.g. Kuhlicke/Steinführer 2010, Lorenz 2010, Norris et al. 2008, Cutter s.a.). However, in disaster management literature there is no agreement on a common definition (resilience as an outcome or process) nor on baseline factors to determine community resilience.

Yet it seems appropriate to draw on such a baseline definition for understanding it’s meaning and underlying concept. For this purpose two definitions are cited here, exemplifying an underlying joint agreement upon resilience properties:

  • Cutter (s.a.: 3)[6]: “Resilience is the ability of a system to respond and recover from disaster. It includes those inherent conditions that allow the system to absorb impacts and cope with an event, as well as those post-event adaptations that help the system to change and learn and thus achieve an acceptable level of functioning.”
  • CRSI (2011: 12)[7]: “The CRSI defines community resilience as the capability of a community to anticipate risk, limit impact, and recover rapidly through survival, adaptation, evolution, and growth in the face of turbulent change”.


In particular with respect to planning for secure systems of different kinds, resilience can be described to be based on the following characteristics:

  • It reflects the extent of change that a system can experience while retaining its order, or normative (formal) as well as its dynamic organization.
  • It reflects the capability level of a system for self-organization.
  • It requires both acceptance by as well as symmetric competences of the citizens.
  • It reflects the capability of a system to learn and adapt to changing environments while retaining its characteristics and identity (or, technically, its operational closure).

On the bottom line, resilience can in general be considered as the degree to which a system (e.g. an urban environment as a structural and as a social system) is capable of organizing itself to increase its capacity for learning from past disruptions for better future protection and improved risk reduction (cf. Sapirstein 2009[8]).


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.).”[9]

By identifying potential 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[10].

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

The message for urban planning is that it should 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 200: 122)[11].

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 (cf. Sapirstein 2009)[12].

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.[13]

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” 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 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.”[14]


References

  1. ↑ Lorenz, D.F. (2010): The diversity of resilience: contributions from a social science perspective. Nat Hazards. Published online: 23 November 2010. DOI: 10.1007/s11069-010-9654-y.
  2. ↑ 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.
  3. ↑ 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].
  4. ↑ 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.
  5. ↑ 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.
  6. ↑ Cutter, S. L. (s.a.): A Framework for Measuring Coastal Hazard Resilience in New Jersey Communities. White Paper for the Urban Coast Institute. Retrieved from: http://www.monmouth.edu/uploadedFiles/Resources/Urban_Coast_Institute/SusanCutterFrameworkforMeasuringCoastalHazardResilientCommun.pdf [last access: 2012-03-21].
  7. ↑ CRSI (2011): Community Resilience System Initiative (CRSI) Steering Committee. Final Report — a Roadmap to Increased Community Resilience. Community Resilience System Initiative, Community and Regional Resilience Institute: Washington D.C. Retrieved from: http://www.resilientus.org/library/CRSI_Final_Report-1_1314792521.pdf [last access: 2012-06-05].
  8. ↑ 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].
  9. ↑ 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.
  10. ↑ 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].
  11. ↑ 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.
  12. ↑ 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].
  13. ↑ M. Pelling: The Vulnerability of Cities: Natural Disasters and Social Resilience. London: Sterling, VA: Earthscan, 2003, p. 12.
  14. ↑ 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.


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