Since the early work on defining and analyzing resilience in domains such as engineering, ecology and psychology, the concept has gained significant traction in many fields of research and practice. It has also become a very powerful justification for various policy goals in the water sector, evident in terms like flood resilience, river resilience, and water resilience. At the same time, a substantial body of literature has developed that questions the resilience concept's systems ontology, natural science roots and alleged conservatism, and criticizes resilience thinking for not addressing power issues. In this study, we review these critiques with the aim to develop a framework for power‐sensitive resilience analysis. We build on the three faces of power to conceptualize the power to define resilience. We structure our discussion of the relevant literature into five questions that need to be reflected upon when applying the resilience concept to social–hydrological systems. These questions address: (a) resilience of what, (b) resilience at what scale, (c) resilience to what, (d) resilience for what purpose, and (e) resilience for whom; and the implications of the political choices involved in defining these parameters for resilience building or analysis. Explicitly considering these questions enables making political choices explicit in order to support negotiation or contestation on how resilience is defined and used. This article is categorized under: Human Water > Water Governance. Engineering Water > Planning Water.

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This paper applies an Adaptation Tipping Point (ATP) approach for the assessment of vulnerability to flooding in the city of Dhaka, Bangladesh. A series of rigorous modelling exercises for fluvial and pluvial flooding was conducted to identify the critical ATPs of the physical system, under both existing and proposed flood risk management strategies, for different urban and climate change scenarios. But a standalone assessment of the physical system’s ATPs is insufficient to gain a complete understanding of flood risks; community resilience also depends on people’s adaptability and the acceptance of risks by the community in question. Through participatory public consultations, this study determines the critical ATPs for community risk acceptance. The concept of the “Integrated Adaptation Tipping Point (IATP)”, introduced here, combines the accepted level of risk to the community with the ATPs for physical systems. This approach reveals that the assessed vulnerability to flooding increases when social tipping points are considered.