Understanding Disaster Resilience

What lies beyond social capital? The role of social psychology in building community resilience to climate change.

“…Some researchers argue that conceptualizing community resilience as an adaptive process (Abeling et al, 2019; Norris et al, 2008) can be more beneficial compared with a view of the concept as merely an outcome. Norris et al (2008) defined community resilience as, “a process linking a set of adaptive capacities to a positive trajectory of functioning and adaptation after a disturbance” (p. 130).…”

“…The authors analyzed definitions of community resilience and its comprising elements, suggesting that, “resilience is better conceptualized as an ability or process than as an outcome” as well as that, “resilience is better conceptualized as adaptability than as stability” (p. 130). In the same manner, Abeling et al (2019) stated that a dynamic approach to community resilience is less reductionist compared with older, outcome-based approaches, as it paves the way for the exploration of adaptive community processes and to identifying specific indicators. Almedom (2013) also stated that the development of resilience should not be perceived as solely the responsibility of experts and outsiders; rather, it is dependent upon the processes of emergence, self-organization, and self-governance, elements that cannot be taught (Furedi, 2008) but only be enhanced and assisted by interventions through policy and practice.…”

“…The discussion revolves around definitions of community resilience that are often contradictory and conflicting (e.g., dynamic vs. stable, equilibrium vs. evolution, process vs. outcome to name a few), with some authors expressing pessimism with regard to the "revolutionary" capacity of the paradigm (Alexander, 2013) or in relation to researchers' attempts to come to a definite conclusion about any "real" meaning of resilience (Ntontis, Drury, Amlôt, Rubin, & Williams, 2018a). Some researchers argue that conceptualizing community resilience as an adaptive process (Abeling et al, 2019;Norris et al, 2008) can be more beneficial compared with a view of the concept as merely an outcome. Norris et al (2008) defined community resilience as, "a process linking a set of adaptive capacities to a positive trajectory of functioning and adaptation after a disturbance" (p. 130).…”

Resilience Assessment of Urban Communities

“…Cutter et al (2014) assert that research on quantifying community resilience is still at the preliminary stage. Even though much efforts has already been made to boost research on community resilience indicator (Cutter et al 2010;Norris et al 2008;Twigg 2009a), there is still no acceptable method for the evaluation of community resilience and there are still challenges in developing real evaluation strategies (Abeling et al 2014).…”

PEOPLES: A Tool to Measure Community Resilience

“…Although many attempts have been made to consolidate research on community resilience (e.g. (Twigg 2009), (Norris et al 2008), (Cutter et al 2010)), no accepted method exists so far and there are still difficulties in developing concrete assessment approaches (Abeling et al 2014). This paper introduces an indicator-based method to compute the resilience of urban communities based on the PEOPLES framework (Cimellaro et al 2016).…”