The Importance and Challenges of Anticipation for Community Resilience
Becker, Per LU
(2011)
IDER 2011
- Abstract
- Resilience is a debated concept with numerous definitions. If focusing on describing a community under stress of a particular disruptive event, its more traditional etymological meaning of ability to spring back after deformation, or its more applied meaning of ability to cope with and recover from the event, are sufficient. However, if focusing on building and maintaining resilient communities over time, more abilities are necessary. Hollnagel1 suggests four requisites for resilient socio-technical systems; the ability to anticipate, monitor, respond to and learn from disruptive or destructive events. This approach to resilience is also applicable to communities and societies, although this context entails further challenges. This study... (More)
- Resilience is a debated concept with numerous definitions. If focusing on describing a community under stress of a particular disruptive event, its more traditional etymological meaning of ability to spring back after deformation, or its more applied meaning of ability to cope with and recover from the event, are sufficient. However, if focusing on building and maintaining resilient communities over time, more abilities are necessary. Hollnagel1 suggests four requisites for resilient socio-technical systems; the ability to anticipate, monitor, respond to and learn from disruptive or destructive events. This approach to resilience is also applicable to communities and societies, although this context entails further challenges. This study is focused on the importance of anticipation, in the sense of creating foresight for guiding human decisions and activities to promote safety and sustainability, and on the particular challenges for such anticipation in our complex and dynamic world. Human activity is constantly changing our risk landscape, and there are a number of macro-level processes adding to this creeping change, such as climate change, urbanisation, increasing complexity, etc. Without ability to anticipate these changes, it is difficult to know what threats to monitor, what risks to mitigate as our communities develop, as well as what potential events to prepare for in the future. Risk assessment is in other words a requisite for guiding decisions today that will determine our tomorrow. Assessing risk for community resilience is however fraught with particular challenges. Risk assessment methodologies for community resilience must be able to accommodate different stakeholder values (multi-value), incorporate a wide range of events that may impact what stakeholders value (multi-hazard), integrate a multitude of factors and processes contributing to the susceptibility of what stakeholders’ value to the impact of the events (multi-susceptive), involve various stakeholders across functional, administrative and geographical borders (multi-stakeholder), integrate several risk assessments performed by different groups of stakeholders (multi-analysis), and integrate phenomena on various spatial and temporal scales, as well as structural and functional complexity (systemic). (Less)
Please use this url to cite or link to this publication:
https://lup.lub.lu.se/record/2295004
- author
- Becker, Per
LU
- organization
- publishing date
- 2011
- type
- Contribution to conference
- publication status
- published
- subject
- keywords
- resilience, community resilience, anticipation, risk assessment, risk analysis, safety, sustainability, sustainable development
- conference name
- IDER 2011
- conference dates
- 2011-04-13
- language
- English
- LU publication?
- yes
- id
- 0415cf06-b169-4646-94e1-1d6fdd9f3028 (old id 2295004)
- date added to LUP
- 2016-04-04 12:05:12
- date last changed
- 2021-03-18 02:27:16
@misc{0415cf06-b169-4646-94e1-1d6fdd9f3028,
abstract = {{Resilience is a debated concept with numerous definitions. If focusing on describing a community under stress of a particular disruptive event, its more traditional etymological meaning of ability to spring back after deformation, or its more applied meaning of ability to cope with and recover from the event, are sufficient. However, if focusing on building and maintaining resilient communities over time, more abilities are necessary. Hollnagel1 suggests four requisites for resilient socio-technical systems; the ability to anticipate, monitor, respond to and learn from disruptive or destructive events. This approach to resilience is also applicable to communities and societies, although this context entails further challenges. This study is focused on the importance of anticipation, in the sense of creating foresight for guiding human decisions and activities to promote safety and sustainability, and on the particular challenges for such anticipation in our complex and dynamic world. Human activity is constantly changing our risk landscape, and there are a number of macro-level processes adding to this creeping change, such as climate change, urbanisation, increasing complexity, etc. Without ability to anticipate these changes, it is difficult to know what threats to monitor, what risks to mitigate as our communities develop, as well as what potential events to prepare for in the future. Risk assessment is in other words a requisite for guiding decisions today that will determine our tomorrow. Assessing risk for community resilience is however fraught with particular challenges. Risk assessment methodologies for community resilience must be able to accommodate different stakeholder values (multi-value), incorporate a wide range of events that may impact what stakeholders value (multi-hazard), integrate a multitude of factors and processes contributing to the susceptibility of what stakeholders’ value to the impact of the events (multi-susceptive), involve various stakeholders across functional, administrative and geographical borders (multi-stakeholder), integrate several risk assessments performed by different groups of stakeholders (multi-analysis), and integrate phenomena on various spatial and temporal scales, as well as structural and functional complexity (systemic).}},
author = {{Becker, Per}},
keywords = {{resilience; community resilience; anticipation; risk assessment; risk analysis; safety; sustainability; sustainable development}},
language = {{eng}},
title = {{The Importance and Challenges of Anticipation for Community Resilience}},
url = {{https://lup.lub.lu.se/search/files/40943541/2295005.pdf}},
year = {{2011}},
}