Resilience to What? Resilience for Whom?

Cutter, Susan L.

doi:10.1111/geoj.12174

Cited by 262 publications

(166 citation statements)

References 19 publications

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“…SRA defines resilience as the “ability of a system to sustain or restore its basic functionality following a risk source or an event” (Society of Risk Analysis, ). This is in line with the popular engineering (in particular infrastructure) view that conceptualizes resilience as the ability to “bounce back” following shocks (Cutter, ). Other characterizations of resilience, particularly in the social sciences, focus more on the capacity for adaptive learning and change following events (Cutter, ).…”

Section: Conceptual Limitationssupporting

confidence: 81%

Review and Evaluation of the J100‐10 Risk and Resilience Management Standard for Water and Wastewater Systems

et al. 2019

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Risk analysis standards are often employed to protect critical infrastructures, which are vital to a nation's security, economy, and safety of its citizens. We present an analysis framework for evaluating such standards and apply it to the J100‐10 risk analysis standard for water and wastewater systems. In doing so, we identify gaps between practices recommended in the standard and the state of the art. While individual processes found within infrastructure risk analysis standards have been evaluated in the past, we present a foundational review and focus specifically on water systems. By highlighting both the conceptual shortcomings and practical limitations, we aim to prioritize the shortcomings needed to be addressed. Key findings from this study include (1) risk definitions fail to address notions of uncertainty, (2) the sole use of “worst reasonable case” assumptions can lead to mischaracterizations of risk, (3) analysis of risk and resilience at the threat‐asset resolution ignores dependencies within the system, and (4) stakeholder values need to be assessed when balancing the tradeoffs between risk reduction and resilience enhancement.

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Section: Conceptual Limitationssupporting

confidence: 81%

Review and Evaluation of the J100‐10 Risk and Resilience Management Standard for Water and Wastewater Systems

et al. 2019

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“…These decisions raise societal and ethical questions regarding whom and what should be prioritized to remain safe when infrastructure fails (Cutter, 2016). The safe-to-fail approach urges stakeholders to make explicit decisions about failure consequences, meaning that decisions made today will have a direct connection to eventual undesirable futures.…”

Section: Safe-to-fail and The Infrastructure Trolley Problemmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Infrastructure Trolley Problem: Positioning Safe‐to‐fail Infrastructure for Climate Change Adaptation

et al. 2019

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Motivated by the need for cities to prepare for and adapt to climate change, we advance the paradigm of safe-to-fail by focusing on the decision dilemmas and the consideration of infrastructure failure consequences in developing infrastructure. Infrastructures are largely designed as fail-safe; that is, they are not intended to fail, and when failure happens, the consequences are severe. Safe-to-fail has been recently presented as the antithesis of fail-safe, without any specific guidance of what the paradigm is or how to apply it. There is an emerging need for stakeholders, including policy makers, planners, engineers, utilities, and communities to understand infrastructure failures, bring their knowledge into the infrastructure development process, and help adapt cities to unpredictable and changing climate risks. We frame safe-to-fail as an infrastructure development paradigm that internalizes the consequences of infrastructure failure in the development process. This framing of safe-to-fail further reveals an emerging "infrastructure trolley problem" where the adaptive capacity of some regions is improved at the expense of others. We demonstrate practical dilemmas in developing infrastructure under nonstationary climate and guide managing trade-offs in the prioritization of different consequences of infrastructure failure.

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“…These ruptures are often unexpected and for which planning is difficult if, at times, impossible (for a recent survey of the vast literature, see Wilson, ). There is a need to address the question of “resilience for whom?” (Brown, ; Cote & Nightingale, ; Cutter, ; Lebel et al, ; Pugh, ). Who benefits from certain understandings and implementations of the concept of resilience?…”

Section: Resilience Drr and Drementioning

confidence: 99%

A proposal for unpacking the politics of knowledge production in disaster reduction education

Trumble

2018

Geography Compass

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The Sendai Framework for disaster risk reduction (2015–2030) states that education is an important way to build resilience of people and communities. Further, reducing inequality should be a goal of disaster risk reduction (DRR) politics. Disaster reduction education (DRE), like the ideas resilience and DRR from which it stems, is not an innocent notion. The production of knowledge and its implementation via DRE are inherently political. With this in mind, I discuss recent work in DRE and suggest that science and technology studies (STS) is a helpful ally in examining the significance of DRE for communities. I first discuss the relationship between resilience, DRR, and DRE. I then review recent case studies from the growing field of scholarship in DRE; each of which brings into question (a) the politics of knowledge production and (b) uneven relationships across scales that shape the ways in which education for disaster risk is implemented. Next, I explore how scholarship from STS is useful to think through ways to further unpack the politics of expertise woven into DRE. I conclude by stating that if we are to consider possibilities for DRE practices that increase equality, we must first explore the power relations that shape DRE. STS engagements with expertise will help in the process.

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Resilience to What? Resilience for Whom?

Cited by 262 publications

References 19 publications

Review and Evaluation of the J100‐10 Risk and Resilience Management Standard for Water and Wastewater Systems

Review and Evaluation of the J100‐10 Risk and Resilience Management Standard for Water and Wastewater Systems

The Infrastructure Trolley Problem: Positioning Safe‐to‐fail Infrastructure for Climate Change Adaptation

A proposal for unpacking the politics of knowledge production in disaster reduction education

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