enhancing resilience

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Enhancing Resilience

David AlexanderUniversity College London

Kesennuma, Japan

An academic perspective on enhancingbusiness and community resilience.

• the concept has a millennial history

• there are many possible definitions

• is it the opposite of vulnerability?

• should it focus on the community scale?

• an objective, a process or a strategy? .

Resilience

RESILIENCE:as a material has brittlestrength and ductility:

society must have an optimumcombination of resistance tohazard impacts and ability

to adapt to them.

Broaderscope andoutcomes

Changingobjectivesof emergencymanagement

Civil Protection

DisasterManagement

Resilience

Civil Contingencies Management

Disaster Risk Reduction

General resilience

Disaster resilience Disaster mitigation

Disaster response

The broader picture

physicalenvironmental

socialeconomic

health-relatedcultural

educationalinfrastructuralinstitutional

RESILIENCECOPING

VULNERABILITYFRAGILITY

SUSCEPTIBILITYOrganisation:• public admin.• private sector• civil society

Community

Individual

Resilience: facets...

...and relationships

Can we really understand a holisticconcept like resilience by breakingit down into its component parts?

Is the category approach helpful ormerely a hindrance to understanding?

Attitud

e

Theingredientsof resilience

Emergencycommunications

Searchand

rescue

Emergencymedicalresponse

Emergencymanagement

Emergencyresponse

Healthsystem

Contingencyplanning

Is resilience a paradigm?

Paradigm: a conceptual or methodologicalmodel underlying the theories and practices of a science or discipline at a particular time.

Is this resilience?

Family home

What does resilience, or the lack of it, really mean?

Proposition: the opposite of resilienceis not vulnerability, or failure to

prepare for disaster, it is corruption.

• corruption

• political decision-making

• shoddy building (often wilful)

• ignorance (sometimes wilful)

• seismicity.

What causes earthquake disasters?- in probable order of importance -

• difficult to define

• virtually impossible to measure

• extremely pervasive, endogenous

• moral and ethical frameworks vary

• links with other ills (black economy).

Corruption

The principalproblem withthe concept ofresilience maysimply be thatwe have askedtoo much of it.

In one sense, the opposite of resilience isvulnerability: in another it is uncertainty.

ResilienceResistance

Risk Susceptibility

Physical(including natural,built, technological)

Social(including cultural,political, economic)

EnvironmentAtt

ribut

es

Source: McEntire 2001

Liabilities

Capa

bilities

VULNERABILITY

DETERMINISMCause Effect

PROBABILITY(constrained uncertainty)

Cause Single, multiple or cascading effects

THE KNOWN

THE UNKNOWN

PURE UNCERTAINTYCausal relationship

unknown

Greyarea

Cascading effects

Collateral vulnerability

Secondarydisasters

Interaction between risks

Climatechange

Probability

Indeterminacy

"Fat-tailed" (skewed)distributionsof impacts

• it is different for natural, socialtechnological and intentional disasters

• the principal problem refers toexceptional high-magnitude events

• 'black swans' do not exist in this field

• neither do 'fat-tailed' distributions(but skewed distributions do exist)

• scenarios for uncertainty are difficult.

Challenges of coping with uncertainty

Interdisciplinarity andfragmentation of effort

Ecology

Geology

(& Geomorphology)

Geophysics

(inc. Seismology)

VolcanologyClimatology

Hydraulics

Hydrology

Meteorology

Architecture

Civil engineering

Geotechnical engineering

Structural engineering

Mechanical &

electrical engineeringInformation &

communication

technology (ICT)

Computer technology

Remote sensing

Risk analysis (inc.

risk identification,

estimation,

management &

communication)

Cartography

Development studies

Economics

Geography, History

Jurisprudence & legal stds

Urban & regional planning

Mass media studies

Psychology

Sociology

Epidemiology

Nursing

Nutrition

Pharmacology

General medicine

Surgery &

emergency medicine

Public health, hygiene

& epidemiology

Veterinary sciences

Health sciencesSocial & spatial sciences

Computational

& analytical

sciences

Construction sciences

Atmospheric & water sciences

Earth & environmental sciences

HAZARD,

RISK and

DISASTER

CONSTITUENTDISCIPLINES

Organisationalsystems:management

Socialsystems:behaviour

Naturalsystems:function

Technicalsystems:

malfunction

VulnerabilityHazard

Resilienc

e

Politicalsystems:decisions

RESILIENCE

Social

Tech

nica

l

Physical

Psych

ological

naturalsocial

technologicalintentionalcompoundcascading

CLIMATE CHANGEADAPTATION

DISASTER RISKREDUCTION

SUSTAINABILITYSCIENCE

OTHER HAZARDSAND RISKS

The concept of resilienceinterfaces with sustainability.

SUSTAINABILITYOF DISASTER

RISK REDUCTION

DAILY RISKS

(e.g.unem-ployment,poverty)

EMERGINGRISKS

(e.g. climatechange,

pandemics)

GENERALSUSTAINABILITY

(e.g. lifestyles, economicactivities, environment)

MAJOR DISASTER RISKS

(e.g. floods, drought,landslides, heatwaves)

RISKSdaily: unemployment, poverty, disease, etc.major disaster: floods, storms, quakes, etc.emerging risks: pandemics, climate change

SUSTAINABILITYdisaster risk reduction

resource consumptionstewardship of the environment

economic activitieslifestyles and communities

SUSTAINABILITY

Sustainabledevelopment

and livelihoods

Sustainablecivil protectionprogrammes

Sustainablefunding

Public andpoliticalsupport

It is often argued that theconcept of resilience is best

applied at the community level.

• a social grouping that may or may notoccupy a definable physical space

• an open-ended concept with nopredefined geographical scale

• a heterogeneous group of people withdifferent views and perspectives

• a power structure that exists for thebenefit of the powerful (elite capture).

What is a community?

SocietyCulturePoliticsEconomyWelfare

HospitalsChurchMedia

Community-based

services

FamilyCommunityWorkplace

individual

Bronfenbrenner's community resilience theory

Microsystem

MesosystemMacrosystem

Chronosystem

Exosystem

• a source of factions and conflict

• dominated by powerful individuals

• indifferent to disaster risk reduction

• lacking in social cohesion

• indisposed to act without coercion.

Communities may be...

BENIGN (healthy)at the service of the people

MALIGN (corrupt)at the service of vested interests

interplay dialectic

Justification Development

[spiritual, cultural, political, economic]

IDEOLOGY CULTURE

Conclusions

Tacloban, Philippines:five beached ships witha community on theseaward side of them,March 2014.

Personalor privateinterestsPublic

interestCultural

acceptability

LESSONS...LEARNED?

Sustainablelessons Uncertainty,

unpredictability

LESSONS...LEARNED?

Incentivesto learn

MAGNITUDE& FREQUENCY

KNOWLEDGESCIENCE

LEGISLATION

IMPLEMENTATION

COMPLIANCE

LAG

LAG

LAG

CUMULATIVELAG

EVENTS

Broad professional training in emergency management

Professional experienceand training

Disciplinary training(e.g. bachelor's degree)

Commonculture

Commonlanguage

Commonobjectives

• advances in knowledgehave had a valuable impact

• the whole DRR problem isbetter known than ever before

• interdisciplinary research and problem-solving have made some progress

• but the balance is still weighted heavilyin favour of a worsening situation.

In a positive sense...

Armaments

Drug trade

People trafficking

Forced migration

Censorship

Tax havens

Tax avoidance

Domination

Repression

Polarisation

Expoitation

Dictatorship

Rape

Attrocities

Denial of asylum

Warfare

Asymetrical conflict

Militias

Terrorism

Poverty

Torture

Enslavement

Suppression of dissent

Racism

Domestic violence

Hunger

Refugees

david.alexander@ucl.ac.ukwww.slideshare.net/dealexanderemergency-planning.blogspot.com

Ishinomaki, Japan

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